Cranberry (Vaccinium macrocarpon) is a North American natural fruit. consumed as food and used for health promotion and prevention of various diseases. Aim. The present study was designed to evaluate the protective effect of cranberry fruit extract on nephrotoxicity induced by cisplatin in mice by measuring selected oxidative stress markers. Methods. Twenty-eight male albino mice were used in this study. The animals were divided into 4 groups as follows: Group I [Negative Control]/orally-administered normal saline for 7 successive days; Group II [Orally-administered cranberry fruit extract alone (200 mg/kg) for 7 successive days; Group III/Mice IP injection with cisplatin (12mg/kg) on day 7 and; Group IV [Orally-administered cranberry fruits extract for 7 successive days followed by single IP injection of cisplatin on day 7. After euthanization of each animal by diethyl ether (on day 8th), serum and renal tissue samples were collected for analysis. Results. Administration of cranberry fruit extract resulted in a significant decline in serum creatinine level (0.87±0.120) and a significant elevation in renal reduced glutathione level (197.42±62.958) (P<0.05) with the improvement in the histological analysis of renal tissue of mice of Group IV compared to that in cisplatin intraperitoneally-injected Group III mice. Conclusions. Orally-administrated cranberry extract prior to cisplatin exerts a protective effect against nephrotoxicity induced by cisplatin via improving the oxidative stress process in mice.
The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of environmental pH on production of biofilms and virulence genes expression in Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Among 303 clinical and environmental samples 109 (61 + 48) isolates were identified as clinical and environmental P. aeruginosa isolates, respectively. Clinical samples were obtained from patients in the Al-Yarmouk hospital in Baghdad city, Iraq. Waste water from Al-Yarmouk hospital was used from site before treatment unit to collect environmental samples. The ability of prod
The aim of this work is to enhance the mechanical properties of the glass ionomer cement GIC (dental materials) by adding Zirconium Oxide ZrO2 in both micro and nano particles. GIC were mixed with (3, 5 and 7) wt% of both ZrO2 micro and nanoparticles separately. Compressive strength (CS), biaxial flexural strength (BFS), Vickers Microhardness (VH) and wear rate losses (WR) were investigated. The maximum compression strength was 122.31 MPa with 5 wt. % ZrO2 micro particle, while 3wt% nanoparticles give highest Microhardness and biaxial flexural strength of 88.8 VHN and 35.79 MPa respectively. The minimum wear rate losses were 3.776µg/m with 7 wt. % ZrO2 nanoparticle. GIC-contai
... Show MoreIn drilling fluid program, selecting the drilling fluid that will reduce the lost time is the first objective, and will be economical regardless of its cost. The amount and type of solids in drilling fluid is the primary control of the rheological and filtration properties. Palygorskite clay (attapulgite) is an active solid that has the ability to reactive with its environment and form a gel structure within a fluid and due to its stability in the presence of brines and electrolytes this type of clay is preferred for use. The aim of this study is to improve properties of Iraqi palygorskite (PAL) by adding different chemical additives such as caustic soda NaOH and soda ash Na2CO3 with a different con
... Show MoreIn the present study, the effectiveness of a procedure of electrocoagulation for removing chemical oxygen demand (COD) from the wastewater of petroleum refinery has been evaluated. Aluminum and stainless steel electrodes were used as a sacrificial anode and cathode respectively. The effect of current density (4-20mAcm−2), pH (3-11), and NaCl concentration (0-4g/l) on efficiency of removal of chemical oxygen demand was investigated. The results have shown that increasing of current density led to increase the efficiency of COD removal while increasing NaCl concentration resulted in decreasing of COD removal efficiency. Effect of pH was found to be lowering COD re
Rainwater harvesting could be a possible solution to decrease the consequences of water scarcity and energy deficiency in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). This study aims to calculate the water and energy (electricity) saved by rainwater harvesting for rooftops and green areas in Sulaimani city, KR, Iraq. Various data were acquired from different formal entities in Sulaimani city. Moreover, Google Earth and ArcMap 10.4 software were used for digitizing and calculating the total rooftop and green areas. The results showed that for the used runoff coefficients (0.8 and 0.95), the harvested rainwater volumes were 2901563 and 12197131 m³ during the study period (2005 – 2006) and (2019-2020). Moreover, by compa
... Show MoreThe paper uses the Direct Synthesis (DS) method for tuning the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller for controlling the DC servo motor. Two algorithms are presented for enhancing the performance of the suggested PID controller. These algorithms are Back-Propagation Neural Network and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The performance and characteristics of DC servo motor are explained. The simulation results that obtained by using Matlab program show that the steady state error is eliminated with shorter adjusted time when using these algorithms with PID controller. A comparative between the two algorithms are described in this paper to show their effectiveness, which is found that the PSO algorithm gives be
... Show MoreWater pollution as a result of contamination with dye-contaminating effluents is a severe issue for water reservoirs, which instigated the study of biodegradation of Reactive Red 195 and Reactive Blue dyes by E. coli and Bacillus sp. The effects of occupation time, solution pH, initial dyes concentrations, biomass loading, and temperature were investigated via batch-system experiments by using the Design of Experiment (DOE) for 2 levels and 5 factors response surface methodology (RSM). The operational conditions used for these factors were optimized using quadratic techniques by reducing the number of experiments. The results revealed that the two types of bacteria had a powerful effect on biodegradable dyes. The regression analysis reveale
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