Abstract Candida albicans is a commensal fungal pathogen that grows in yeast and hyphal forms in the human gut. C. albicans causes mucosal and cutaneous diseases that can result in significant mortality following systematic infections and it also exhibits drug resistance. Zebrafish have been an excellent model to investigate C. albicans infections because of their transparency and the availability of many transgenic lines. However, there is a limitation in using zebrafish as a model because the fish embryos cannot survive at 37°C therefore it is not suitable for studying Candida infections at physiological relevant human body temperature. In this thesis, the normal embryonic development of Arabian killifish (A. dispar) is investigated, revealing that embryogenesis was divided into 32 stages based on diagnostic patterns of development. A. dispar can also found to tolerate a wide range of temperatures and salinities. This suggests that A. dispar could be developed as a novel model to investigate host-pathogen interactions. The tolerance of A. dispar to high temperatures may in part be attributable to brown pigment cells with a highly fluorescent character that may have developed to allow the fish to adapt to live within extreme environmental conditions with strong sunlight and a wide range of temperatures (Chapter 3). In terms of Candida infections, this study examined A. dispar as a model to test C. albicans pathogenicity. The survival of A. dispar embryos following Candida infection showed a dose dependent relationship. We also found that A. dispar can survive longer than zebrafish after infection. Furthermore, C. albicans cells were observed to undergo a transition from yeast to hyphae at 37°C. An investigation of the ability of mutant strains of C. albicans with defects in cell wall mannosylation revealed a significant impact on virulence, host mortality, and the fishes’ immune response. The present study found that although the deletion of O- and N-mannan from the cell wall of C. albicans, affected fungal burden (attenuation), and the survival of the infected embryos per se was significantly decreased in the infections of the mutant strains compared to the WT. This data confirms the importance of the mannosylation state of the cell wall in triggering an immune recognition event (Chapter 4). A. dispar is also shown to be suitable for studying the effectiveness of 3 | P a g e antifungals. Fluconazole treatment of infected embryos and eggs promoted greater rates of survival at high doses, alongside a significant reduction of C. albicans CFUs (Chapter 4). When looking at the Candida-host interaction, we directly observed phagocytosed yeast cells within macrophages. Various detection methods were used to follow macrophages and neutrophils including Western blotting, immunostaining and histological staining (Sudan black and FITC-tyramide) allowing the monitoring of the time course of the immune cells. A biphasic response of macrophages was detected by L-plastin Western blotting, suggesting activation of two different type of macrophage: activated macrophage (M1) and alternative macrophage (M2). We also assayed reactive oxygen species (ROS) within infected embryos using a fluorescent probe (H2DCFDA), revealing the accumulation of the fluorescent probe at the sites of infection. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the oxidative and immune response using the H2DCFDA and qPCR were also accomplished within A. dispar embryos after infection with both the WT and mutant strains of Candida albicans (WT, pmr1∆, mnt1-mnt2∆, and och1∆). The results confirmed that the mutant strains did not activate a host oxidative stress response nor immune cell accumulation when compared to WT, suggesting that the immune response is less activated against these mutants. Finally, a new transgenic line of A. dispar fish was developed using Betaactin-DsR-LoxP-GFP. The new transgenic A. dispar is suggested to be an ideal model for real time observation of host-pathogen interactions and for investigation of molecular functions of the immune response. Overall these results improve our understanding of the use of a new transparent fish model to study fungal pathogenesis and demonstrates the potential advantages of using this species in future studies of bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens at a physiologically relevant temperature for human infection. Such a model could lead us to investigate in more depth the key interactions between pathogens and their host and permit the screening and development of new antifungal therapies (that might target the pathogens directly or target the host immune system). View full metadata
This research is considered one of the important researches in Maysan Governorate, as it focuses on the construction of helicopter airport project in the oil fields of the Maysan Oil Company, where the oil general companies in Maysan Governorate suffer from the cost of transporting the foreign engineering experts and the governing equipment of sustaining oil industry from Iraq's international airports to oil fields and vice versa. Private international transport companies transport foreign engineering from the oil fields to Iraqi airports and vice versa, and other international security companies take action to provide protection for foreign engineering experts during transportation. Hence, this process is very costly.
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The objective of this research to analyze the effectiveness of monetary policy in achieving economic stability and growth for the period 2004-2011 ،This period of time saw a fundamental shift in monetary policy after the issuing new law the Central Bank of the full independence of the monetary authority ،This is Prompt the monetary authority to bring about a change in the philosophy and objectives and the tools used to achieve the desired goals ،Which give them the ability to control the size of the money supply and to achieve price stability Indeed، Monetary policy has been able to achieve the golden triangle of economic stability ،Consisted of staff، exchange rate stability and low and stable general level of prices
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In recent years, the positioning applications of Internet-of-Things (IoT) based systems have grown increasingly popular, and are found to be useful in tracking the daily activities of children, the elderly and vehicle tracking. It can be argued that the data obtained from GPS based systems may contain error, hence taking these factors into account, the proposed method for this study is based on the application of IoT-based positioning and the replacement of using IoT instead of GPS. This cannot, however, be a reason for not using the GPS, and in order to enhance the reliability, a parallel combination of the modern system and traditional methods simultaneously can be applied. Although GPS signals can only be accessed in open spaces, GP
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The last four decades have witnessed a number of rapid and successive international changes in terms of future impacts and orientations. International economy has transformed into a competitive small village due to the information technology revolution and the liberation processes and the economic openness that the market witnesses, there became one market and the activists in this international market are not governments only but rather international organizations and huge multinational corporations where each spares no effort to take every opportunity and face challenges within the frame of removing all impediments and release transactions under the auspices of these global developments, the idea of creating Islamic
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The results show the inability to apply the Taylor rule within inflation and GDP Gaps because the monetary behave is elated from the Iraqi economy.
When applying the Taylor rule to exchange rate with the inflation and the output gap, the results do not match the nominal price announced by the central thing, which proves the lack of commitment by the Central Bank by using the Taylor rule, whether short-run interest rate or exchange rate (Nominal Anchor), so it did not stay to the Iraqi Central Bank only using the principle of Taylor with the expected inflation rate below the level of output (Macro activity) for the separation of monetary behavior from the real one o
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In this study, the first kind Bessel function was used to solve Kepler equation for an elliptical orbiting satellite. It is a classical method that gives a direct solution for calculation of the eccentric anomaly. It was solved for one period from (M=0-360)° with an eccentricity of (e=0-1) and the number of terms from (N=1-10). Also, the error in the representation of the first kind Bessel function was calculated. The results indicated that for eccentricity of (0.1-0.4) and (N = 1-10), the values of eccentric anomaly gave a good result as compared with the exact solution. Besides, the obtained eccentric anomaly values were unaffected by increasing the number of terms (N = 6-10) for eccentricities (0.8 and 0.9). The Bessel
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When optimizing the performance of neural network-based chatbots, determining the optimizer is one of the most important aspects. Optimizers primarily control the adjustment of model parameters such as weight and bias to minimize a loss function during training. Adaptive optimizers such as ADAM have become a standard choice and are widely used for their invariant parameter updates' magnitudes concerning gradient scale variations, but often pose generalization problems. Alternatively, Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD) with Momentum and the extension of ADAM, the ADAMW, offers several advantages. This study aims to compare and examine the effects of these optimizers on the chatbot CST dataset. The effectiveness of each optimizer is evaluat
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