Quantitative real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-qPCR) has become a valuable molecular technique in biomedical research. The selection of suitable endogenous reference genes is necessary for normalization of target gene expression in RT-qPCR experiments. The aim of this study was to determine the suitability of each 18S rRNA and ACTB as internal control genes for normalization of RT-qPCR data in some human cell lines transfected with small interfering RNA (siRNA). Four cancer cell lines including MCF-7, T47D, MDA-MB-231 and Hela cells along with HEK293 representing an embryonic cell line were depleted of E2F6 using siRNA specific for E2F6 compared to negative control cells, which were transfected with siRNA not specific for any gene. Using RT-qPCR, Ct (threshold cycle) values of 18S and ACTB were determined in transfected cells and compared with control cells. In the selection of the above cell lines, 18S was identified as the most stably expressed reference gene than ACTB in gene knockdown experiments.
The electrode in the microbial fuel cell has a significant effect on cell performance. The treatment of the electrode is a crucial step to make the electrode surface more habitable for bacteria growth, thus, increases the power production as well as waste treatment. In the current study, two graphite electrodes were treated by a microwave. The first electrode was treated with 100W microwave energy, while the second one was treated with 600W microwave energy. There is a significant enhancement in the surface of the graphite anode after the pretreatment process. The results show an increase in the power density from 10 mW/m2 to 15 mW/m2 with 100w treatment and to 13.47 mW/m2 with 600w treatment. An organic
... Show MoreThe current study introduces a novel technique to handle electrochemical localized corrosion in certain limited regions rather than applying comprehensive cathodic protection (CP) treatment. An impressed current cathodic protection cell (ICCPC) was fabricated and firmly installed on the middle of a steel structure surface to deter localized corrosion in fixed or mobile steel structures. The designed ICCPC comprises three essential parts: an anode, a cathode, and an artificial electrolyte. The latter was developed to mimic the function of the natural electrolyte in CP. A proportional-integrated-derivative (PID) controller was designed to stabilize this potential below the ICCPC at a cathodic potential of −850 mV, which is crucial for prote
... Show MoreNear surface mounted (NSM) carbon fibers reinforced polymer (CFRP) reinforcement is one of the techniques for reinforcing masonry structures and is considered to provide significant advantages. This paper is composed of two parts. The first part presents the experimental study of brick masonry walls reinforced with NSM CFRP strips under combined shear-compression loads. Masonry walls have been tested under vertical compression, with different bed joint orientations 90° and 45° relative to the loading direction. Different reinforcement orientations were used including vertical, horizontal, and a combination of both sides of the wall. The second part of this paper comprises a numerical analysis of unreinforced brick masonry (URM) wa
... Show MoreContext and its influence in direction of reference by Abi Hussein Al Basri
Survival analysis is one of the types of data analysis that describes the time period until the occurrence of an event of interest such as death or other events of importance in determining what will happen to the phenomenon studied. There may be more than one endpoint for the event, in which case it is called Competing risks. The purpose of this research is to apply the dynamic approach in the analysis of discrete survival time in order to estimate the effect of covariates over time, as well as modeling the nonlinear relationship between the covariates and the discrete hazard function through the use of the multinomial logistic model and the multivariate Cox model. For the purpose of conducting the estimation process for both the discrete
... Show MoreDifferent ANN architectures of MLP have been trained by BP and used to analyze Landsat TM images. Two different approaches have been applied for training: an ordinary approach (for one hidden layer M-H1-L & two hidden layers M-H1-H2-L) and one-against-all strategy (for one hidden layer (M-H1-1)xL, & two hidden layers (M-H1-H2-1)xL). Classification accuracy up to 90% has been achieved using one-against-all strategy with two hidden layers architecture. The performance of one-against-all approach is slightly better than the ordinary approach
ZnO-nanoflowers on a transparent conductive tin-doped In2O3 (ITO) glass substrate have been successfully prepared via a simple and efficient growth approach that is combining of dip coating and hydrothermal processes. One thin layer of ZnO nanoparticles is prepared by dip coating method followed by hydrothermally grown of ZnO nanoflowers at low temperature. The morphology and structure of ZnO-nanoflowers were inspected by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD), respectively. The optical absorption and photoluminescence spectra of ZnO-nanoflowers are also investigated. The ZnO-nanoflowers photoanode sho