Academic chemical laboratories (ACL) are considered public places  the employees come in contact with a variety of pollutants. The aim of the current study was to detect heavy metals levels in the indoor air of ACL in two universities in Baghdad city and assess their levels in the academic employees’ scalp hair as biomarkers. Air samples inside ACL were collected to detect Fe, Cd, Zn, Pb and Cu. Scalp hair samples were collected from 40 adult chemical laboratory employees aged 30-60 years, who worked 5 days/week for 6 hours a day. Personal information relating to employees such as age, duration of exposure, smoking habit and sex, was collected as a questionnaire. The results of this study concluded that academic laboratory employ

Biodiesel production process was attracted more attention recently due to the surplus quantity of glycerol (G) as a byproduct from the process. Glycerol Utilization must take in to consideration to fix this issue also, to ensure biodiesel industry sustainability. Highly amount of Glycerol converted to more benefit material Glycerol carbonate (GC) was one of the most allurement compound derived from glycerol by transesterification of glycerol with dimethyl carbonate (DMC). Various parameters have highly impact on transesterification was investigated like catalyst loading (1-5) %wt., molar ratio of DMC: glycerol (5:1 – 1:1), reaction time (30 - 150) min and temperature (40 – 80) ᴼC. The Optimum glycerol carbonate yie

In this paper, a miniaturized 2 × 2 electro-optic plasmonic Mach– Zehnder switch (MZS) based on metal–polymer–silicon hybrid waveguide is presented. Adiabatic tapers are designed to couple the light between the plasmonic phase shifter, implemented in each of the MZS arms, and the 3-dB input/output directional couplers. For 6 µm-long hybrid plasmonic waveguide supported by JRD1 polymer (r33= 390 pm/V), a π-phase shift voltage of 2 V is obtained. The switch is designed for 1550 nm operation wavelength using COMSOL software and characterizes by 2.3 dB insertion loss, 9.9 fJ/bit power consumption, and 640 GHz operation bandwidth

The study included selection six species of the fungi related to Pleurotus genus were evaluated for their ability to production of Pleurotin, one of them, Pleurotus ostreatus (P.11) was isolated and identified in the present study. Pleurotin was extracted with screening by Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC) and quantification High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Cytotoxicity of Pleurotin extracted from P. ostreatus (P.11) grown in different sugar sources (galactose, mannitol, sucrose, dextrose and lactose) liquid media was test against three selected cancer cell lines, CaSki, MCF-7 and A549 addition to Human Non Cancer Fibroblast Cell Line (MRC-5). Pleurotin of P. ostreatus (P.11) grown in galactose induced the significant highest

In this work pyrazolin derivatives were prepared from the diazonium chloride salt of 4-aminobenzoic acid. Azo compounds were prepared from the reaction of an ethanolic solution of sodium acetate and calculated amount of active methylene compound namely, acetyl acetone to obtain the corresponding hydrazono derivative (1). Cyclocondensation reaction of compounds (1) with hydrazine hydrate and phenyl hydrazine in boiling ethanol affording the corresponding pyrazoline-5-one derivatives of 4-aminobenzoic acid (2,3). Then compound (3) was reacted with thionyl chloride to give the corresponding acid chloride derivative(4), followed by conversion into the corresponding acid hydrazide derivative (5) carboxylic acid thiosemicarbazide (11), esters

Albizia lebbeck biomass was used as an adsorbent material in the present study to remove methyl red dye from an aqueous solution. A central composite rotatable design model was used to predict the dye removal efficiency. The optimization was accomplished under a temperature and mixing control system (37?C) with different particle size of 300 and 600 ?m. Highest adsorption efficiencies were obtained at lower dye concentrations and lower weight of adsorbent. The adsorption time, more than 48 h, was found to have a negative effect on the removal efficiency due to secondary metabolites compounds. However, the adsorption time was found to have a positive effect at high dye concentrations and high adsorbent weight. The colour removal effi

This work investigates generating of pure phase Faujasite-type zeolite Y at the ranges chosen for this study via a static aging step in the absence of seeds synthesis. Nano-sized crystals may result when LUDOX AS-40 is used as a silica source for gel composition of range 6 and the crystallization step may be conducted for a period of 4 to 19 hr at 100 ⁰C. Moreover, large-crystals with high crystallinity pure phase Y zeolite can be obtained at hereinabove conditions but when hydrous sodium metasilicate is used as a silica source. The other selected ranges also offer pure phase Y zeolite at the same controlled conditions.

In the geotechnical and terramechanical engineering applications, precise understandings are yet to be established on the off-road structures interacting with complex soil profiles. Several theoretical and experimental approaches have been used to measure the ultimate bearing capacity of the layered soil, but with a significant level of differences depending on the failure mechanisms assumed. Furthermore, local displacement fields in layered soils are not yet studied well. Here, the bearing capacity of a dense sand layer overlying loose sand beneath a rigid beam is studied under the plain-strain condition. The study employs using digital particle image velocimetry (DPIV) and finite element method (FEM) simulations. In the FEM, an experiment

The effects of temperature on an exotic aquatic snail Pomacea canaliculata  (Lamarck, 1819) collected from the Shatt Al-Arab intertidal zone were investigated. A series of laboratory experiments were conducted during the summer period of 2017. Individuals of new born snails hatched in the laboratory from adult snails were collected from Shatt Al-Arab intertidal zone, and subjected to five fixed temperatures: 15, 25, 35, 40 and 45 Cº, after short term thermal acclimation. The heartbeats (HB) were counted at each temperature level. The results showed significant  direct increase of HB from 15 Cº (19.8 HB/min) up to 25 Cº (76 HB/min) (P<0.05)  as well as from 25 Cº to 35 Cº (93 HB/min). At 40 Cº the snail HB