This work aims to fabricate two types of plasmonic nanostructures by electrical exploding wire (EEW) technique and study the effects of the different morphologies of these nanostructures on the absorption spectra and Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) activities, using Rhodamine 6G as a probe molecule. The structural properties of these nanostructures were examined using X-Ray diffraction (XRD). The morphological properties were examined using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). The absorption spectra of the mixed R6G laser dye (concentration 1×10^-6 M) with prepared nanostructures were examined by double beam UV-Vis Spectrophotometer. The Raman spe

In this work, metal oxide nanostructures, mainly copper oxide (CuO), nickel oxide (NiO), titanium dioxide (TiO2), and multilayer structure, were synthesized by the DC reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The effect of deposition time on the spectroscopic characteristics, as well as on the nanoparticle size, was determined. A long deposition time allows more metal atoms sputtered from the target to bond to oxygen atoms and form CuO, NiO, or TiO2 molecules deposited as thin films on glass substrates. The structural characteristics of the final samples showed high structural purity as no other compounds than CuO, NiO, and TiO2 were found in the final samples. Also, the prepared multilayer structures did not show new compounds other than th

Water pollution as a result of contamination with dye-contaminating effluents is a severe issue for water reservoirs, which instigated the study of biodegradation of Reactive Red 195 and Reactive Blue dyes by E. coli and Bacillus sp. The effects of occupation time, solution pH, initial dyes concentrations, biomass loading, and temperature were investigated via batch-system experiments by using the Design of Experiment (DOE) for 2 levels and 5 factors response surface methodology (RSM). The operational conditions used for these factors were optimized using quadratic techniques by reducing the number of experiments. The results revealed that the two types of bacteria had a powerful effect on biodegradable dyes. The regression analysis reveale

In this work, pure and Ag-doped nickel oxide (NiO) thin films were deposited on glass substrates with different dopant concentrations (0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 wt.%) by pulsed-laser deposition (PLD) technique at room temperature. These films were annealed at temperature of 450 °C. The structural and optical properties of the prepared thin films were studied. It was found that annealing process has lead to increase the transmittance of the deposited films. Also, the transmittance was found to increase with doping concentration of silver in the deposited NiO films. The optical energy gap was decreased from 3.5 to 3.2 eV as the doping concentration was increased to 0.4 %.

Nigella sativa has various pharmacological properties and has been used throughout history for a variety of reasons. However, there is limited data about the effects of N. sativa (NS) on human cancer cells. This study aimed at observing the roles of methanolic extract of N. sativa on apoptosis and autophagy pathway in the Human PC3 (prostate cancer) cell line. The cell viability was checked by MTT assay. Clonogenic assay was performed to demonstrate clonogenicity and Western blot was used to check caspase-3, TIGAR, p53, and LC3 protein expression. The results demonstrated that PC3 cell proliferation was inhibited, caspase-3 and p53 protein expression was induced, and LC3 protein expression was modulated. The clonogenic assay showed that PC3