Background: The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is caused by Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov2) which utilizes angiotensin converting enzyme2 (ACE2) to invade the host cells. This membrane-bound peptidase is widely distributed in the body; its activity antagonizes the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS). Once SARS-Cov2 enters the cell, it causes downregulation of ACE2, resulting in the unopposed activation of RAAS. The unregulated activity of the RAAS system can deteriorate the prognosis in COVID-19 patients. A soluble form of ACE2 (sACE2) was reported to have a role in the SARS-Cov2 invasion of the susceptible cells.

Aim of the study: This study aims to inve

Although Bacteroides fragilis is a bacterium present within gut microbiota, the toxin producer strain, known as enterotoxigenic B. fragilis (ETBF), is associated with diarrhea in children less than 5 years of age. This study includes 69 diarrheal and 29 non-diarrheal (control) samples collected from children less than 5 years old. DNA was extracted directly from stool specimens and directed to conventional PCR targeting beta-isopropylmalate dehydrogenase (leuB) gene, used for detection of B. fragilis,  and Bacteroides fragilis toxin (bft) gene, used for the detection of ETBF. The results showed that the prevalence of leuB gene was 78 (79.6%) including 56 (81.2%) in diarr

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

      The aim of this study is to investigate the response of the Ionospheric E- region critical frequency f_oE and virtual height h’E parameters to the solar cycle 22 over Baghdad city (latitude 33.3˚N, longitude 44.4˚E). Both parameters display a high relationship with the sunspot relative number within the ascending and descending phases of the solar cycle. The E - region response to the solar activity is obvious around noon, sunrise and sunset times. Moreover, the gap between local mid-afternoon, dawn and sunset values expands as solar activity rises. In the declining phase, there is an aspect that results in a peak of disturbance. This portion may have

Radon is the air contaminant radioactive gas which people exposed to, is a reason for lung damages and lung cancer. The areas that are subject to high radon levels are found by radon concentration measurement. The radon activity concentration, annual effective dose, and potential alpha energy concentration (PAEC), were measured in houses of Ainkawa region using CR-39 solid state nuclear track detectors SSNTDs with the sealed-can technique. In the present paper the estimated values for radon activity concentration are in the range 55.99-112.8 Bq/m³ with 84.30 Bq/m³ as a mean value, the range of annual effective dose are 1.411-2.872 mSv/y, with mean value 2.124 mSv/y, and the potential alpha energy c

Using watermarking techniques and digital signatures can better solve the problems of digital images transmitted on the Internet like forgery, tampering, altering, etc. In this paper we proposed invisible fragile watermark and MD-5 based algorithm for digital image authenticating and tampers detecting in the Discrete Wavelet Transform DWT domain. The digital image is decomposed using 2-level DWT and the middle and high frequency sub-bands are used for watermark and digital signature embedding. The authentication data are embedded in number of the coefficients of these sub-bands according to the adaptive threshold based on the watermark length and the coefficients of each DWT level. These sub-bands are used because they a

The results show that the compound affects the rest of the living cells after treatment for 15 minutes The influence Almtafr has had the effect BU less than the effect of NTG in the case of the registration of every of Struptomaysan resistance and rifampicin, although the first attribute more responsive

This research was carried out to determine the impact of heat shock, electric shock and seeds in soaking nitrous acid mutagen solution on three cultivars of faba beans plant (Zaina, Aguadulce and Local) at the year 2012-2013. Factorial experiment was arranged in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with three replicates were used. The results showed that heat shock lead to early plants of 50% in flowering and an increase in the number of branches/plant and the number of seeds/pod compared to other treatments, whereas the seeds soaked in nitrous acid mutagen solution gave the highest plant height, leaf area index, number of pods/plant, seed weight, seed yield kg/ha, and did not differ significantly with treatment of electric shock in the