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 MoreIn this paper, An application of non-additive measures for re-evaluating the degree of importance of some student failure reasons has been discussed. We apply non-additive fuzzy integral model (Sugeno, Shilkret and Choquet) integrals for some expected factors which effect student examination performance for different students' cases.
Stone columns are widely used globally due to theirversatility and relative wide applicability to treat different soil and foundation situations but much of the research undertaken to date has focused on their use in soft soils. In countries like Iraq the use of stone columns is still limited from a practical point of view, chiefly as many other soil conditions are commonly encountered. These include collapsible soils: soils that are prone to relatively rapid volume compressions (through collapse of metastable fabrics) that occur due to the action of load and/or increases in water content. Recent work has opened up the possibility to use stone columns in these soils by the use of encasement, thereby overcoming the impact of loss of lateral
... Show MoreIn the present work, pattern recognition is carried out by the contrast and relative variance of clouds. The K-mean clustering process is then applied to classify the cloud type; also, texture analysis being adopted to extract the textural features and using them in cloud classification process. The test image used in the classification process is the Meteosat-7 image for the D3 region.The K-mean method is adopted as an unsupervised classification. This method depends on the initial chosen seeds of cluster. Since, the initial seeds are chosen randomly, the user supply a set of means, or cluster centers in the n-dimensional space.The K-mean cluster has been applied on two bands (IR2 band) and (water vapour band).The textural analysis is used
... Show MoreThis study aims to test ceramic waste's capacity to remove nickel from aqueous solutions through adsorption. Ceramic wastes were collected from the Refractories Manufacturing Plant in Ramadi. Through a series of lab tests, the reaction time (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and 50 minutes, and Ni concentrations (20, 40, 60, and 80) were tested using ceramic wastes with a solid to liquid ratio of 2g/30ml. At a temperature of 30ºC, the pH, total dissolved solids (TDS), and electrical conductivity (EC) were all measured. The equilibrium time was set at 30 min. Thereafter, the sorption (%) somewhat increased positively with the Ni concentration. Freundlich's equation showed that the adsorption intensity is 1.1827 and the Freundlich c
... Show MoreLinear and mass attenuation coefficient of reactive powder concrete (RPC) sample ( of compressive strength equal to 70 Mpa) using beta particles and gamma ray with different energies have been calculated as a function of the absorber thickness and energy. The attenuation coefficient were obtained using NaI(Tl) energy selective scintillation counter with 90Sr/90Y beta source having an energy rang from (0.546-2.274) MeV and gamma ray energies (0.569, 0.662, 1.063, 1.17 and 1.33) MeV . The attenuation coefficient usually depends upon the energy of radiations and nature of the material. The result represented in graphical forms. Exponential decay was observed. It is found that the capability of reactive powder concrete to absorber beta particle
... 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 MoreCadmium is one of the heavy metal found in the wastewater of many industries. The electrocoagulation offers many advantages for the removal of cadmium over other methods. So the removal of cadmium from wastewater by using electrocoagulation was studied to investigate the effect of operating parameters on the removal efficiency. The studied parameters were the initial pH, initial concentration, and applied voltage. The study experiments were conducted in a batch reactor with with two pairs of aluminum electrodes with dimension and 2mm in thick with 1.5 cm space between them. The optimum removal was obtained at pH =7, initial concentration = 50 mg/L, and applied voltage = 20 V and it was 90%.