A reversed-phase HPLC method with fluorescence detection for the determination of the aflatoxins B1, B2, G1 and G2 in 42 animal feeds, comprising corn (16), soya bean meal (8), mixed meal (13), sunflower, wheat, canola, palm kernel, copra meals (1 each) was carried out. The samples were first extracted using acetonitrile:water (9:1), and was further cleaned-up using a multifunctional column. Optimum conditions for the extraction and chromatographic separation were investigated. By adopting an isocratic chromatographic system using a mobile phase comprising acetonitrile:methanol:water (8:27:65, v/v/v), the separation of the four aflatoxins was possible within 30 min. Recoveries for aflatoxins B1, B2, G1 and G2 were 98 ± 0.7%, 95 ± 1.0%, 94

In this study, three strengthening techniques, near-surface mounted NSM-CRFP, NSM-CFRP with externally bonding EB-CFRP, and hybrid CFRP with circularization were studied to increase the seismic performance of existing RC slender columns under lateral loads. Experimentally, 1:3 scale RC models were studied and subjected to both lateral static load and seismic excitation. In the dynamic test, a model was subjected to El Centro 1940 NS earthquake excitation by using a shaking table. According to the test results, the strengthening techniques showed a significant increase in load carrying capacity, of about 86.6%, and 46.6%, for circularization and NSM-CFRP respectively, of the reference unstrengthened columns. On the other hand, column

Osteoporosis (OP) is a systemic skeletal disease characterized by low bone mineral density and deterioration of bone architecture, resulting in bone strength reduction and increased fracture susceptibility. Estrogen deficiency in post-menopausal women is possibly responsible for the instability between bone formation and resorption, which is managed by specific osteoclastogenic cytokines that may be leading to resorption. This study aims to estimation of the concentrations of interleukins −8, −17, −22, beside to certain parameters in blood serum and explained their roles in the development of osteoporosis pathogenicity in postmenopausal women. Materials and Methods A case-control study included 108 Iraqi postmenopausal women participa

The issue of image captioning, which comprises automatic text generation to understand an image’s visual information, has become feasible with the developments in object recognition and image classification. Deep learning has received much interest from the scientific community and can be very useful in real-world applications. The proposed image captioning approach involves the use of Convolution Neural Network (CNN) pre-trained models combined with Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) to generate image captions. The process includes two stages. The first stage entails training the CNN-LSTM models using baseline hyper-parameters and the second stage encompasses training CNN-LSTM models by optimizing and adjusting the hyper-parameters of

To accommodate utilities in buildings, different sizes of openings are provided in the web of reinforced concrete deep beams, which cause reductions in the beam strength and stiffness. This paper aims to investigate experimentally and numerically the effectiveness of using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips, as a strengthening technique, to externally strengthen reinforced concrete continuous deep beams (RCCDBs) with large openings. The experimental work included testing three RCCDBs under five-point bending. A reference specimen was prepared without openings to explore the reductions in strength and stiffness after providing large openings. Openings were created symmetrically at the center of spans of the other specimens

Background: Hyperthyroidism refers to overactive of thyroid gland leading to excessive synthesis of thyroid hormones and accelerated metabolism in the peripheral tissue. Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate a new member of the IL-1 super family of cytokines interleukin-33(IL-33) levels in serum .in order to evaluate its utility as clinical bio marker of autoimmune disease (i.e. hyperthyroidism) Methods: The present study was conducted on 30 patients from the Iraqi female patients with hyperthyroidism attending Baghdad teaching hospital, in addition to 30 healthy controls. All subjects were (35-65) years old. Parameters measured in the sera of patients and healthy groups, were interleukin -33 (IL-33), Thyroxin (T4), Thyroxin (T3)