Background: The beneficial gut bacterium E. coli can cause blood poisoning, diarrhoea, and other gastrointestinal and systemic disorders. Objective: This study amid to examines the antibiofilm activity of Laurus nobilis leaves extract on E. coli isolates and compares pre- and post-treatment gene expression of fimA and papC genes. Subjects and Methods: Ten isolates of E. coli were obtained from the Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology Institute, University of Baghdad, which was previously collected from Baghdad city hospitals and diagnosed by chemical tests, the diagnosis was confirmed using VITEK-2 System. The preparation of the aqueous and methanolic Laurus nobilis leaves extracts was done by using the maceration method and Soxhlet apparatus respectively. HPLC were conducted to determine the active compounds in the extracts. Moreover, molecular detection of fimA and papC genes and analysis of the gene expression by comparing the isolates treated with sub MIC of methanolic L. nobilis leaves extract with the untreated isolates. Results: Methanolic and aqueous extracts contained alkaloids, tannins, phenols, saponins, flavonoids, and glycosides. Seven polyphenolic compounds, four flavonoids derivatives (Apigenin, Luteolin, Rutin, and kaempferol) and three phenolic acids (Caffeic acid, Gallic acid, and Syringic acid), were identified by matching retention time with the standards. Laurus nobilis methanolic leaf extract inhibited 90% and 100% of E. coli biofilm development at 32 and 64 mg/ml. Conclusion: The result of the gene expression revealed that there is a decrease in the expression of the fimA and papC genes. The present study concluded that the Laurus nobilis leaves extract have rich phytochemical contents, so the methanolic extract had an excellent reduction effect on biofilm formation and showed remarkable down-regulation on the papC and fimA genes, which are responsible for the biofilm formation in E. coli.
Background: Obesity is considered an important risk factor for periodontal disease. It has been reported that reactive oxygen species linking both diseases, systemic melatonin supplementation as antioxidant therapy, was addressed as an adjuvant to scaling and root surface debridement (SRP) to enhance the treatment of periodontitis. Objective: To investigate the efficacy of systemic melatonin administration in periodontitis-obese patients as an adjuvant to scaling and root surface debridement (SRP). Methods: A randomized clinical trial was conducted at a dental-specialized center. Eighty subjects were included and allocated into group-I: twenty periodontium-healthy, normal-weight people; group-II: 30 obese patients with stage-III tre
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Background: The evaluation of the chronological age is a practical method in crime investigation field that assists in identifying individuals to treat them as underage or adult. This study aimed to assess the stages of third molars mineralization in relation to chronological age of Iraqi individuals, determine the gender differences and arches (maxillary/mandibular) differences.
Materials and Methods: A total of 300 orthopantomograms of orthodontic patients were collected according to specific criteria and evaluated visually. The developmental stages of maxillary and mandibular third molars were determined according to Demirjian method. T
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In 2010, the tomato leaf miner Tuta absoluta (Meyrick, 1917) was reported for the first time in Iraq. The larvae can feed on all parts of tomato plants and can damage all the growth stages. The main host plant is tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum, but it can also attack other plants in Solanaceae family. In this study it was found attacking alfalfa plants, Medicago sativa in Baghdad Province. This finding reveals that alfalfa also serves as a host plant for T. absoluta in Iraq.
By reading the book (Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo) by Sean B. Carroll, new horizons opened up about the nature of the formation of the living organism. Although he presented the idea that the artist was influenced by the material assets of nature in his holographic art formations, the new science of Evo-Devo (Evolutionary Developmental Science) provided models worth standing on when comparing the similarity of the formation of living organisms on the one hand, and the formation of works of art with holographic organic bodies on the other. But the excitement lies in the fact that the formation of living natural organisms is often driven by subtle intelligent mechanisms that are different from the mechanisms us
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The research is aimed at investigating how the New York Times framed the war against ISIS in its news coverage and which news sources it adopted while reporting on this war.
The research could be classified under descriptive researches. The survey methodology has been adopted and the content analysis has been used. The research sample consists of all the news stories the New York Times have published about the war against ISIS from 10/17/2016 to 4/16/2017 according to the comprehensive sampling method. The number of news stories that were analyzed was (155) news story. The research tool was (coding scheme).
The research has reached the following conclusions:
1. In its news coverage of the war against ISIS, the New York T
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This study was carried out from February to October 2012 in six semi salty ponds in Gwer sub-district which is the first work in the area. A total of 32 species and 2 genera of algae where reported as the new records. Mostly the non diatoms are belonging to Cyanophyta, Chlorophyta, Euglenophyta, Cryptophyta, Chrysophyceae, while diatoms or Bacilariophyceae are belong to pennals- order.
Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)-based plastic optical fiber sensor for estimating the concentration and refractive index of sugar in human blood serum. The sensor is fabricated by a small part (10mm) of optical fiber in the middle is embedded in a resin block and then the polishing process is done, after that it is deposited with about (40nm) thickness of gold metal. The blood serum is placed on gold coated core of an Optical grade plastic optical fiber of 980 µm core diameter.
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Transient mixed convection heat transfer in a confined porous medium heated at periodic sinusoidal heat flux is investigated numerically in the present paper. The Poisson-type pressure equation, resulted from the substituting of the momentum Darcy equation in the continuity equation, was discretized by using finite volume technique. The energy equation was solved by a fully implicit control volume-based finite difference formulation for the diffusion terms with the use of the quadratic upstream interpolation for convective kinetics scheme to discretize the convective terms and the temperature values at the control volume faces. The numerical study covers a range of the hydrostatic pressure sinusoidal amplitude range and
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Flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP) is one of the instances in flexible manufacturing systems. It is considered as a very complex to control. Hence generating a control system for this problem domain is difficult. FJSP inherits the job-shop scheduling problem characteristics. It has an additional decision level to the sequencing one which allows the operations to be processed on any machine among a set of available machines at a facility. In this article, we present Artificial Fish Swarm Algorithm with Harmony Search for solving the flexible job shop scheduling problem. It is based on the new harmony improvised from results obtained by artificial fish swarm algorithm. This improvised solution is sent to comparison to an overall best
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Psoriasis is a complex autoimmune disorder characterized by skin inflammation with keratinocyte proliferation, and 85% of cases present as plaque-type psoriasis. Biologics such as ustekinumab (UST) are highly successful therapies for psoriasis. To achieve maximum clinical efficacy while minimizing undesirable effects, therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) for biologics has emerged. This study aims to measure the UST trough level (TL) and anti-drug antibodies (ADAs) and to evaluate clinical response in Iraqi patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis in order to make appropriate recommendations for modifying therapy. This cross-sectional study enrolled 75 patients, divided into two groups: Group 1, patients who achieved the UST target TL (≥0.6
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