Alteration of repeat tract length within the SSR of phase variable genes may enhance the persistence of isolates within their host for a long time (a period of months) (Alamro et al.,2014). Alamro et al. (2014) showed there was trend towards selection for OFF state or low expression for five phase variable genes (opc, hmbr, nadA, nalP, hpuAB) in three carriers (V54, V124 and V64) within strains belonging into CC174 and CC167 in first, second and third time points. He concluded that the selection for low or OFF state helped N. meningitidis to persist for a long time (Alamro et al., 2014). The current study aimed to detect the alteration in the repeat tracts of the same five variable genes within the previous three carriers (V54, V124, and V64) but for other strains belonging to CC22, CC269, and CC198 at the fourth time point. There was also a trend towards selection for an OFF state or low expression for three genes which are (opc, hpuAb, nalP) with 2/3 (66.6%) carriers while hmbr gene showed ON state in all carriers (100%). This indicates that antibodies formed against (opc, HpuAb, nalP) genes in strains belonging to CC174 and CC167 in first, second and third time points were able to enhance immunization against the isolates in the current study for CC269 and CC22 resulting in the selection for the OFF state or low expression. Conversely, antibodies formed against hmbr gene in the previous time points on isolates within the CC167 may not show immunization against hmbr gene in the isolates of current study CC22, CC198 and CC269 and so the gene stayed in the ON state. Interestingly, the nadA gene was missing from isolates under the current study. These results may reflect important aspects in the vaccination program especially as nadA is one of the component of Bexsero vaccine.
Prosthetic hands are compensatory devices for the hand amputees as a result of injury, various accidents or birth deformities, types of prosthetic hand vary depending on the mechanism they operate and how they perform. There are common types in use that are characterized by their complex mechanisms, which are difficult for the amputee to use or exclude use because of their high cost, therefore the aim of this research is to design an artificial hand that is suitable in terms of simplicity of use and low cost and similar to a natural hand with regard to dimensions and shape that operated in the mechanism of links. This research involves Stress and strain analysis of the prosthetic hand and its fingers that modelled from (Petg CR)
... Show MoreAdverse drug reactions (ADR) are important information for verifying the view of the patient on a particular drug. Regular user comments and reviews have been considered during the data collection process to extract ADR mentions, when the user reported a side effect after taking a specific medication. In the literature, most researchers focused on machine learning techniques to detect ADR. These methods train the classification model using annotated medical review data. Yet, there are still many challenging issues that face ADR extraction, especially the accuracy of detection. The main aim of this study is to propose LSA with ANN classifiers for ADR detection. The findings show the effectiveness of utilizing LSA with ANN in extracting AD
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Students’ feedback is crucial for educational institutions to assess the performance of their teachers, most opinions are expressed in their native language, especially for people in south Asian regions. In Pakistan, people use Roman Urdu to express their reviews, and this applied in the education domain where students used Roman Urdu to express their feedback. It is very time-consuming and labor-intensive process to handle qualitative opinions manually. Additionally, it can be difficult to determine sentence semantics in a text that is written in a colloquial style like Roman Urdu. This study proposes an enhanced word embedding technique and investigates the neural word Embedding (Word2Vec and Glove) to determine which perfo
... Show MoreIn aired and semiarid areas like Iraq, saline soil may be considered one of the major concerns. In addition to environmental effects, they may produce significant geotechnical hazards that could interrupt the structure stability depending on the salt type and its concentration. So, it is crucial to identify the degree of the soil salinity with a proper tool for getting a qualified assessment and consequently offering a suitable treatment. In this paper, the electrical resistivity technique has been employed to detect the degree of soil salinity by considering a new electronic system. The system used a single-phase Direct Current (DC) to Alternating Current (AC) inverter accompanied by a transformer. Natural soils became artificially saline
... Show MoreAmplitude variation with offset (AVO) analysis is an 1 efficient tool for hydrocarbon detection and identification of elastic rock properties and fluid types. It has been applied in the present study using reprocessed pre-stack 2D seismic data (1992, Caulerpa) from north-west of the Bonaparte Basin, Australia. The AVO response along the 2D pre-stack seismic data in the Laminaria High NW shelf of Australia was also investigated. Three hypotheses were suggested to investigate the AVO behaviour of the amplitude anomalies in which three different factors; fluid substitution, porosity and thickness (Wedge model) were tested. The AVO models with the synthetic gathers were analysed using log information to find which of these is the
... Show MoreIn this study, Al2O3 thin films were prepared by dc reactive sputtering technique using different gas mixtures of argon and oxygen gases (90:10, 70:30, 50:50, 30:70, and 10:90). These films were characterized to introduce their surface morphology and elemental composition as functions of the oxygen content in the gas mixture. The gas mixing ratio plays a crucial role in controlling the nanoscale morphology of the prepared thin films. The [Al]/[O] ratio varies non-linearly with the Ar:O2 mixing ratio. Increasing the oxygen content leads to a progressive decrease in surface roughness, resulting in smoother and more uniform films with finer granular features. These results presented herein are useful to optimize the sputtering process to ac
... Show MoreOne of the main parts in hydraulic system is directional control valve, which is needed in order to operate hydraulic actuator. Practically, a conventional directional control valve has complex construction and moving parts, such as spool. Alternatively, a proposed Magneto-rheological (MR) directional control valve can offer a better solution without any moving parts by means of MR fluid. MR fluid consists of stable suspension of micro-sized magnetic particles dispersed in carrier medium like hydrocarbon oil. The main objectives of this present research are to design a MR directional control valve using MR fluid, to analyse its magnetic circuit using FEMM software, and to study and simulate the performance of this valve. In this research, a
... Show MoreThree mesoporous silica with different functional group were prepared by one-step synthesis based on the simultaneous hydrolysis and condensation of sodium silicate with organo - silane in the presence of template surfactant polydimethylsiloxane - polyethyleneoxide (PDMS - PEO). The prepared materials were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and nitrogen adsorption/desorption experiments. The results indicate that the preparation of methyl and phenyl functionalized silica were successful and the mass of methyl and phenyl groups bonded to the silica structure are 15, 38 mmol per gram silica. The average diameter of the silica particles are 103.51,
... Show MoreIn this work, a comparative analysis for the behavior and pattern of the variations of the IF2 and T Ionospheric indices was conducted for the minimum and maximum years of solar cycles 23 and 24. Also, the correlative relationship between the two ionospheric indices was examined for the seasonal periods spanning from August 1996 to November 2008 for solar cycle 23 and from December 2008 to November 2019 for solar cycle 24. Statistical calculations were performed to compare predicted values with observed values for the selected indices during the tested timeframes. The study's findings revealed that the behavior of the examined indices exhibited almost similar variations throughout the studied timeframe. The seasonal variations were
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