Sera samples were collected from 60 children aged 4-60 months, all were clinically and serologically proven cases of visceral leishmaniasis, as well as  from 10 healthy children, all were seronegative with no history of parasitic infection who serve as a control during the study. Serum total protein and albumin were measured and compared between the control and visceral leishmaniasis patients. Serum protein profiles have been investigated using the conventional sodium dodecyl sulphate – polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE).  Serum of control group showed the specific protein pattern with five protein bands, while serum protein profile in visceral leishmaniasis pat

Aggregate production planning (APP) is one of the most significant and complicated problems in production planning and aim to set overall production levels for each product category to meet fluctuating or uncertain demand in future. and to set decision concerning hiring, firing, overtime, subcontract, carrying inventory level. In this paper, we present a simulated annealing (SA) for multi-objective linear programming to solve APP. SA is considered to be a good tool for imprecise optimization problems. The proposed model minimizes total production and workforce costs. In this study, the proposed SA is compared with particle swarm optimization (PSO). The results show that the proposed SA is effective in reducing total production costs and req

An experiment was carried out in pots under open field conditions in the fall seasons of 2017 and 2018 at the College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences, University of Baghdad, for improving field emergence and drought stress tolerance in sorghum. Three factors were studied. 1st factor was three cultivars (Inqath, Rabeh and Buhoth70). 2nd factor was primed and unprimed seed. 3rd factor was represented by the irrigation intervals every 2, 4 and 6 days. Randomized complete block design with four replicates was used. The results showed that Buhoth 70 cultivar had a significant superiority compared to others in traits of the first and final count of emergence, emergence energy and emergence rate index (54.2%, 26.7%, 1.747 and 70.7 % d

This paper reports an experimental study of welding of dissimilar materials between transparent Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) and stainless steel 304 sheets using a pulsed mode Nd:YAG laser. The process was carried out for two cases; laser transmission joining (LTJ) and conduction joining (CJ). The former is achieved when the joint is irradiated from the polymer side and the latter when the joint is irradiated from the opposite side (metal side). The light and process parameters represented by the peak power (Pp), pulse duration (τ), pulse repetition rate (PRR), scanning speed (ν) and pulse shape have a significant effect on the joint strength (Fb), joint bead width (b), joint quality and appearance. The optimum parameters were determined

Owing to high antibacterial resistance of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, it could be considered as the main reason behind the nosocomial infections. P. aeruginosa has a well-known biofilm forming ability. The expression of polysaccharide encoding locus (pelA gene) by P. aeruginosa is essential for this ability. The purpose of the current research was to determine the biofilm formation in P. aeruginosa isolated from clinical samples and to evaluate the role of the selected PelA gene in biofilm formation using PCR method in Iraqi patients. Results revealed that 24 (96%) isolates were found to have the ability to form biofilm that was remarkably related to gentamicin resistance. Moreover, the pelA gene was found in all biofilm-producers. In c