Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the cause of the major world health issue, tuberculosis (TB). The cytokine, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) has been implicated in protection against TB in the early stages of the disease. TNF-α is an effective cytokine in the killing of intracellular M. tuberculosis. This study inducted to investigate whether there is any relationship between levels of TNF-α in sera of TB patients and their recovery, and is there any difference in the level of this cytokine in sera of female and male TB patients. This study included 29 patients with pulmonary TB (18 female and 11 male), their ages ranging from 37 to 59 years. All of them received first line TB therapy. They were consulted at Pasture Center during September 2012, at Baghdad city, Iraq. TNF-α level in sera was estimated by ELISA. Data were analyzed using Two sample T test for measuring the differences between the groups., no significant difference (p= 0.198) was found in serum TNF-α concentration between TB patients (mean= 8.09 pg/ml) and in control group (mean= 5.62 pg/ml). On the other hand no significant difference was found between serum TNF-α concentration in male TB patients (mean= 8.42 pg/ml, p= 0.71) and female TB patients (mean= 7.89 pg/ml). As a conclusion, TNF-α level in TB patients may associate with recover of the patient after treatment. On the other hand no relationship was found between the levels of TNF-α in TB patients’ sera and their gender.
Semiconductor-based photocatalytic processes are widely applied as ecofriendly technology for degrading organic pollutants. Establishing photocatalytic heterojunctions with Z-type photocarriers transfer pathways is projected to be a superb strategy to enhance photocatalytic behavior. In this paper, novel and stable (0D/2D) heterojunctions of CoS-embedded boron-doped g-C3N4 (CoS/BCN) with a high rate of charges transfer/separation were assembled for degradation of malachite green dye (MG). The CoS/BCN photocatalyst achieves a photodegradation efficiency of 96.9 % within 1 h of LED illumination, which is 2.5 and 1.4-fold enhancement compared with bare g-C3N4 and BCN, respectively. Besides, the results of species-trapping trials exhibited that
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<p><span>A Botnet is one of many attacks that can execute malicious tasks and develop continuously. Therefore, current research introduces a comparison framework, called BotDetectorFW, with classification and complexity improvements for the detection of Botnet attack using CICIDS2017 dataset. It is a free online dataset consist of several attacks with high-dimensions features. The process of feature selection is a significant step to obtain the least features by eliminating irrelated features and consequently reduces the detection time. This process implemented inside BotDetectorFW using two steps; data clustering and five distance measure formulas (cosine, dice, driver & kroeber, overlap, and pearson correlation
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Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the principal nosocomial causative agents. This bacterium has the capability to resist wide range of antibiotics and it is responsible for many diseases like skin, nose and wounds infection. In this study, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-PCR was applied with ten random primers to examine the molecular diversity among methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates in the hospitals and to investigate the genetic distance between them. 90 Isolates were collected from clinical specimens from Iraqi hospitals for a total of 90 isolates. Only 10 strains (11.11%) were found to be MRSA. From these 10 primers, only 9 gave clear amplification products. 91 fragment l
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In the past infectious diseases affected the quality of lifestyle during home confinement. The study conducted examines the influence of home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak on lifestyle, mental wellbeing, nutritional status, and sleeping pattern.
An online multicategorical questionnaire was distributed to collect demographic information combined with the following tools: Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ), International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), WHO-5 wellbeing score, and Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). A snowball non-discriminate sampling procedure was
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NH3 gas sensor was fabricated based on deposited of Functionalized Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs-OH) suspension on filter paper substrates using suspension filtration method. The structural, morphological and optical properties of the MWCNTs film were characterized by XRD, AFM and FTIR techniques. XRD measurement confirmed that the structure of MWCNTs is not affected by the preparation method. The AFM images reflected highly ordered network in the form of a mat. The functional groups and types of bonding have appeared in the FTIR spectra. The fingerprint (C-C stretch) of MWCNTs appears in 1365 cm-1, and the backbone of CNTs observed at 1645 cm-1. A homemade sensi
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The ability of beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) to uptake three pharmaceuticals (diclofenac, mefenamic acid and metronidazole) from two types of soil (clay and sandy soil) was investigated in this study to explore the human exposure to these pharmaceuticals via the consumption of beans. A pot experiment was conducted with beans plants which were grown in two types of soil for six weeks under controlled conditions. During the experiment period, the soil pore water was collected weekly and the concentrations of the test compounds in soil pore water as well as in plant organs (roots, stems and leaves) were weekly determined.
The results showed that the studied pharmaceuticals were detected in all plant tissues; their concentration
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Erratum for Organic acid concentration thresholds for ageing of carbonate minerals: Implications for CO2 trapping/storage.