Background: Vitamin D improves innate immunity by enhancing the expression of antimicrobial peptides. The antimicrobial action of cathelicidin is widespread and effective against cariogenic bacteria. This research aimed to investigate the effect of vitamin D deficiency on the level of salivary cathelicidin concerning dental caries experience.

Subjects and Methods: A case-control study was carried out, and the sample was composed of 80 females; the study group involved 40 females with a serum vitamin D concentration of less than 10 ng/ml. In addition to the control group involving 40 females wh

Using zooplankton as bioindicators, this study evaluates the ecological condition of the Euphrates River in Iraq's Babylon Province. Site 1 (North Hillah, next to the old Babylon ruins), Site 2 (Hillah city center), Site 3 (South Hillah, close to Al-Mahaweel), and Site 4 (near Al-Kifl town) were the four monitoring locations chosen along the river. The highest and lowest averages of the measured physical and chemical factors indicate temperature (25.1°-29.4°), pH (7.2-7.9), electrical conductivity (EC) (940 µS/cm-1241µS/cm), total dissolved solids TDS (591 mg/L-789mg/L), dissolved oxygen (DO) (5.6 mg/ l-7.1 mg/L), biological oxygen demand (BOD5) (2.4mg/L-4.2 mg/L), nitrate (1.3 mg/L–3.2 mg/L), nitrite (0.04 mg/L–0.13 mg/L),

In this work, metal oxides nanostructures, mainly, copper oxide (CuO), nickel oxide (NiO), titanium dioxide (TiO2), and multilayer structure were synthesized by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The structural purity and nanoparticle size of the prepared nanostructures were determined. The individual metal oxide samples (CuO, NiO and TiO2) showed high structural purity and minimum particle sizes of 34, 44, 61 nm, respectively. As well, the multilayer structure showed high structural purity as no elements or compounds other than the three oxides were founds in the final sample while the minimum particle size was 18 nm. This reduction in nanoparticle size can be considered as an advantage for the dc reactive magnetron sputtering tec

In this work, a novel design for the NiO/TiO2 heterojunction solar cells is presented. Highly-pure nanopowders prepared by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique were used to form the heterojunctions. The electrical characteristics of the proposed design were compared to those of a conventional thin film heterojunction design prepared by the same technique. A higher efficiency of 300% was achieved by the proposed design. This attempt can be considered as the first to fabricate solar cells from highly-pure nanopowders of two different semiconductors.

In this work, multilayer nanostructures were prepared from two metal oxide thin films by dc reactive magnetron sputtering technique. These metal oxide were nickel oxide (NiO) and titanium dioxide (TiO2). The prepared nanostructures showed high structural purity as confirmed by the spectroscopic and structural characterization tests, mainly FTIR, XRD and EDX. This feature may be attributed to the fine control of operation parameters of dc reactive magnetron sputtering system as well as the preparation conditions using the same system. The nanostructures prepared in this work can be successfully used for the fabrication of nanodevices for photonics and optoelectronics requiring highly-pure nanomaterials.

Abstract: Tin oxide thin films were deposited by direct current (DC) reactive sputtering at gas pressures of 0.015 mbar – 0.15 mbar. The crystalline structure and surface morphology of the prepared SnO2 films were introduced by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). These films showed preferred orientation in the (110) plane. Due to AFM micrographs, the grain size increased non-uniformly as the working gas pressure increased.

In a hybrid cooling solar thermal systems , a solar collector is used to convert solar energy into heat energy in order to super heat the refrigerant leaving the compressor, and this process helps in the transformation of refrigerant state from gaseous state to the liquid state in upper two-thirds of the condenser instead of the lower two-thirds such as in the traditional air-conditioning systems and this will reduce the energy needed to run the process of cooling .In this research two systems with a capacity of 2 tons each were used, a hybrid air-conditioning system with an evacuated tubes solar collector and a traditional air-conditioning system . The refrigerant of each type was R22.The comparison was in the amou

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have become an integral part of wide range of applications. One of these applications of GNSS is implementation of the cellular phone to locate the position of users and this technology has been employed in social media applications. Moreover, GNSS have been effectively employed in transportation, GIS, mobile satellite communications, and etc. On the other hand, the geomatics sciences use the GNSS for many practical and scientific applications such as surveying and mapping and monitoring, etc.

In this study, the GNSS raw data of ISER CORS, which is located in the North of Iraq, are processed and analyzed to build up coordinate time series for the purpose of detection the