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.
Due to the difficulties that Iraqi students face when writing in the English language, this preliminary study aimed to improve students' writing skills by using online platforms remotely. Sixty first-year students from Al-Furat Al–Awsat Technical University participated in this study. Through these platforms, the researchers relied on stimuli, such as images, icons, and short titles to allow for deeper and more accurate participations. Data were collected through corrections, observations, and feedback from the researchers and peers. In addition, two pre and post-tests were conducted. The quantitative data were analysed by SPSS statistical Editor, whereas the qualitative data were analyzed using the Piot table, an Excel sheet. The resu
... Show MoreA loS.sless (reversible) data hiding (embedding) method inside an image (translating medium) - presented in the present work using L_SB (least significant bit). technique which enables us to translate data using an image (host image), using a secret key, to be undetectable without losing any data or without changing the size and the external scene (visible properties) of the image, the hid-ing data is then can be extracted (without losing) by reversing &n
... Show MoreIn this paper, an algorithm for reconstruction of a completely lost blocks using Modified
Hybrid Transform. The algorithms examined in this paper do not require a DC estimation
method or interpolation. The reconstruction achieved using matrix manipulation based on
Modified Hybrid transform. Also adopted in this paper smart matrix (Detection Matrix) to detect
the missing blocks for the purpose of rebuilding it. We further asses the performance of the
Modified Hybrid Transform in lost block reconstruction application. Also this paper discusses
the effect of using multiwavelet and 3D Radon in lost block reconstruction.
In this paper, integrated quantum neural network (QNN), which is a class of feedforward
neural networks (FFNN’s), is performed through emerging quantum computing (QC) with artificial neural network(ANN) classifier. It is used in data classification technique, and here iris flower data is used as a classification signals. For this purpose independent component analysis (ICA) is used as a feature extraction technique after normalization of these signals, the architecture of (QNN’s) has inherently built in fuzzy, hidden units of these networks (QNN’s) to develop quantized representations of sample information provided by the training data set in various graded levels of certainty. Experimental results presented here show that
... Show MoreThe proposed algorithm that is presented in this paper is based on using the principle of texts translation from one language to another, but I will develop this meaning to cipher texts by using any electronic dictionary as a tool of ciphering based on the locations of the words that text contained them in the dictionary. Then convert the text file into picture file, such as BMP-24 format. The picture file will be transmitted to the receiver. The same algorithm will be used in encryption and decryption processing in forward direction in the sender, and in backward direction in the receiver. Visual Basic 6.0 is used to implement the proposed cryptography algorithm.
Steganography is the art of secret communication. Its purpose is to hide the presence of information, using, for example, images as covers. The frequency domain is well suited for embedding in image, since hiding in this frequency domain coefficients is robust to many attacks. This paper proposed hiding a secret image of size equal to quarter of the cover one. Set Partitioning in Hierarchal Trees (SPIHT) codec is used to code the secret image to achieve security. The proposed method applies Discrete Multiwavelet Transform (DMWT) for cover image. The coded bit stream of the secret image is embedded in the high frequency subbands of the transformed cover one. A scaling factors ? and ? in frequency domain control the quality of the stego
... Show MoreMedian filter is adopted to match the noise statistics of the degradation seeking good quality smoothing images. Two methods are suggested in this paper(Pentagonal-Hexagonal mask and Scan Window Mask), the study involved modified median filter for improving noise suppression, the modification is considered toward more reliable results. Modification median filter (Pentagonal-Hexagonal mask) was found gave better results (qualitatively and quantitatively ) than classical median filters and another suggested method (Scan Window Mask), but this will be on the account of the time required. But sometimes when the noise is line type the cross 3x3 filter preferred to another one Pentagonal-Hexagonal with few variation. Scan Window Mask gave bett
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