This study aims to suggest an alternative to the use of quality agricultural soil in the brick industry (Iraq). The Late Miocene claystone bed in the Injana Formation in central Iraq was targeted through the study of 18 exposed sections that were sampled by using the trench sampling method. The claystones are characterized by quartz (36.4%) followed by calcite (32.8%), quartz (36.4%) feldspar (2.6%), gypsum (1.3%) and dolomite (0.7%), kaolinite (10.5%), illite (7.7%), chlorite (6.7%), palygorskite (6.0%) and montmorillonite (0.7%). New thermal mineral phases were formed at 950°C, including diopside (62.9%), quartz (18.4%), wollastonite (8.28%), akermanite (7.6%), Anorthite (6.25%), Nosean (4.9%), gehlenite (3.75%) and Lazurite (3.1

Antibacterial activity of CNSs against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli was estimated. Higher inhibition zone of 18 mm and 20 mm were observed against S. aureus and E.coli, respectively, at a concentration of 2 mg/ml of carbon nanosphere after 24 hrs of incubation at 37 ºC. In vitro cytotoxicity experiment was performed on two parasite strains of Leishmania donovani and Leishmania tropica by using MTT assay. L. donovani revealed more sensitiv to the CNSs than L. tropica. An intermediate level of cytotoxicity of 51.31 % was observed when 2.4 mg/ml of CNSs was incubated with L. donovani, while weak cytotoxicity of 37.20 % was shown when the

Epoxy resin has many chemical features and mechanical properties, but it has a small elongation at break, low impact strength and crack propagation resistance, i.e. it exhibits a brittle behavior. In the current study, the influence of adding kaolin with variable particle size on the mechanical properties (flexural modulus E, toughness Gc, fracture toughness Kc, hardness HB, and Wear rate WR) of epoxy resin was evaluated. Composites of epoxy with varying concentrations (0, 10, 20, 30, 40 weights %) of kaolin were prepared by hand-out method. The composites showed improved (E, Gc, Kc, HB, and WR) properties with the addition of filler. Also, similar results were observed with the decrease in particle size. In addition, in this study, mult

Due to the significance of hospital drinking water, a study was done to assess the water in three hospitals in Baghdad (Al-Yarmouk Teaching Hospital, Ibn Sina Hospital, and Ibn-Al-Nafis Hospital) for its nature and quality, compare it to other hospitals in terms of its physical, chemical, and bacterial specifications, and compare it to international standards. According to Iraqi standards from 2009 and WHO standards from 2011, Chemical factors were measured, which included pH, Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), and Calcium Ion (Ca+2). Reported readings are all within acceptable ranges for drinking water. In contrast, turbidity, total hardness (T.H.), chlorides (Cl-), magnesium (Mg+2), the number of aerobic plates (APC), total coliform (T

Stripping is one of the major distresses within asphalt concrete pavements caused due to penetration of water within the interface of asphalt-aggregate matrix. In this work, one grade of asphalt cement (40-50) was mixed with variable percentages of three types of additives (fly ash, fumed silica, and phosphogypsum) to obtained an modified asphalt cement to resist the effect of stripping phenomena .The specimens have been tested for physical properties according to AASHTO. The surface free energy has been measured by using two methods namely, the wilhelmy technique and the Sessile drop method according to NCHRP-104
procedures. Samples of asphalt concrete using different asphalt cement and modified asphalt cement percentages(4.1,4.6 an

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the most common disease and cause of death globally. The aim of the study is investigation and detection of some bacterial interfering with CRC occurrence and progression. The study conducted between September 2022 till February 2023, a total of 50 specimens were collected from confirmed CRC patients. In addition, 50 stool specimens were collected from Healthy volunteers, considers as control group. Isolation and identification of bacteria in all collected specimens were done by using cultural and differential media (blood agar, macconkey agar and Pfizer agar), as well as the VITEK- 2 compact system. The bacterial species, in the specimens of control were ( Escherichia coli 50 (86.20%), Klebsiella Pneumoni

This paper proposes a neuro-fuzzy system to model β-glucosidase activity based on the reaction’s pH level and temperature. The developed fuzzy inference system includes two input variables (pH level and temperature) and one output (enzyme activity). The multi-input fuzzy inference system was developed in two stages: first, developing a single input-single output fuzzy inference system for each input variable (pH, temperature) separately, using the robust adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) approach. The neural network learning techniques were used to tune the membership functions based on previously published experimental data for β-glucosidase. Second, each input’s optimized membership functions from the ANF