Cutaneous leishmaniasis is a disease caused by Leishmania tropica parasite. Current treatments for this parasite are undesirable because of their toxicity, resistance, and high cost. Macrophages are key players against pathogens. Nitric oxide (NO), a molecule produce by immune cells, controls intracellular killing of pathogens during infection. Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) demonstrated broad-spectrum activity against various types of infectious diseases. It has the ability to stimulate oxygen species production. This study aims to analyze the macrophages activation through NO production and estimate the cytotoxicity based on the lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release upon exposure to L. tropica and Ag NPs. Serially concentrations of Ag NPs were used under two conditions during and following macrophages exposure to L. tropica. MTT assay was used to determine the cytotoxicity of Ag NPs on L. tropica amastigotes during infection of macrophages in vitro. The results showed that by increasing the Ag NPs concentrations, the viability percentage of L. tropica amastigotes decreased and reached to 21.7 ± 0.64 % during infection compared with the control. The 50% inhibitory concentration of Ag NPs on amastigotes was 2.048µg/ml during infection. Moreover, post-phagocytosis study involved the assessment of NO and LDH release by macrophages upon exposure to L. tropica. It have shown that untreated macrophages released low levels of NO while in the presence of Ag NPs, macrophages were activated to produce higher levels of NO under all experimental conditions. On the other hand, macrophages were capable of controlling cytotoxicity and decreasing LDH levels during phagocytosis of L. tropica amastiogotes. Taking together, these findings suggest that Ag NPs can enhance macrophages NO production which provides a method for the identification of Ag NPs ligands with microbicidal and anti-cytotoxic properties against L. tropica pathogens.
Quantitative analysis of human voice has been subject of interest and the subject gained momentum when human voice was identified as a modality for human authentication and identification. The main organ responsible for production of sound is larynx and the structure of larynx along with its physical properties and modes of vibration determine the nature and quality of sound produced. There has been lot of work from the point of view of fundamental frequency of sound and its characteristics. With the introduction of additional applications of human voice interest grew in other characteristics of sound and possibility of extracting useful features from human voice. We conducted a study using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) technique to analy
... Show MoreCopper, and its, alloys and composites (being the matrix), are broadly used in the electronic as well as bearing materials due to the excellent thermal and electrical conductivities it has.
In this study, powder metallurgy technique was used for the production of copper graphite composite with three volume perc ent of graphite. Processing parameters selected is (900) °C sintering temperature and (90) minutes holding time for samples that were heated in an inert atmosphere (argon gas). Wear test results showed a pronounced improvement in wear resistance as the percent of graphite increased which acts as solid lubricant (where wear rate was decreased by about 88% as compared with pure Cu). Microhardness and
... Show MoreThe agriculture around the world faced many difficulties and the important was to reduce inputs of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and increase the total yield specially with the continuous grow of populations numbers at the world expected to reach more than 9 billion by 2050. In other hand there are other problems which make the challenges bigger such as wars, biotic and abiotic stress, and diseases. The scientists tried to find solutions by using Nano-fertilization which consider a modern way to quickly grow up the yield and decrease use the chemicals. The use of nanotechnology may be destructive on human and the environment due to fast accumulation in the tissues of alive bodie
The development of analytical techniques is required for the accurate and comprehensive detection and measurement of antibiotic contamination in the environment. Metronidazole is a common antibacterial, antiprotozoal, and antibiotic drug. Thiamine is a vital biological and medicinal ingredient that is involved in the metabolism of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates that produce energy. The study aims to identify the drugs in a mixture without separation to provide more information to confirm if a drug is present in a combination. Metronidazole and thiamine are two examples of pharmaceutical and environmental samples that can be identified using spectrophotometric techniques because of their low cost and simplicity of use. The operati
... Show MoreAutism is a lifelong developmental deficit that affects how people perceive the world and interact with each others. An estimated one in more than 100 people has autism. Autism affects almost four times as many boys than girls. The commonly used tools for analyzing the dataset of autism are FMRI, EEG, and more recently "eye tracking". A preliminary study on eye tracking trajectories of patients studied, showed a rudimentary statistical analysis (principal component analysis) provides interesting results on the statistical parameters that are studied such as the time spent in a region of interest. Another study, involving tools from Euclidean geometry and non-Euclidean, the trajectory of eye patients also showed interesting results. In this
... Show MoreMost of the known cases of strong gravitational lensing involve multiple imaging of an active galactic nucleus. The properties of lensed active galactic nuclei make them promising systems for astrophysical applications of gravitational lensing. So we present a simple model for strong lensing in the gravitational lensed systems to calculate the age of four lensed galaxies, in the present work we take the freedman models with (k curvature index =0) Euclidian case, and the result show a good agreement with the other models.
Forward osmosis (FO) process was applied to concentrate the orange juice. FO relies on the driving force generating from osmotic pressure difference that result from concentration difference between the draw solution (DS) and orange juice as feed solution (FS). This driving force makes the water to transport from orange juice across a semi-permeable membrane to the DS without any energy applied. Thermal and pressure-driven dewatering methods are widely used, but they are prohibitively energy intensive and hence, expensive. Effects of various operating conditions on flux have been investigated. Four types of salts were used in the DS, (NaCl, CaCl2, KCl, and MgSO4) as osmotic agent and the experiments were performed at the concentration of
... Show MoreCompaction curves are widely used in civil engineering especially for road constructions, embankments, etc. Obtaining the precise amount of Optimum Moisture Content (OMC) that gives the Maximum Dry Unit weight gdmax. is very important, where the desired soil strength can be achieved in addition to economic aspects.
In this paper, three peak functions were used to obtain the OMC and gdmax. through curve fitting for the values obtained from Standard Proctor Test. Another surface fitting was also used to model the Ohio’s compaction curves that represent the very large variation of compacted soil types.
The results showed very good correlation between the values obtained from some publ
... Show MoreThe problem of the high peak to average ratio (PAPR) in OFDM signals is investigated with a brief presentation of the various methods used to reduce the PAPR with special attention to the clipping method. An alternative approach of clipping is presented, where the clipping is performed right after the IFFT stage unlike the conventional clipping that is performed in the power amplifier stage, which causes undesirable out of signal band spectral growth. In the proposed method, there is clipping of samples not clipping of wave, therefore, the spectral distortion is avoided. Coding is required to correct the errors introduced by the clipping and the overall system is tested for two types of modulations, the QPSK as a constant amplitude modul
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