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.
The biochar prepared from sawdust raw material was applied in this study for the treatment of wastewater polluted with methyl orange dye. The effect of pH (2-11), initial concertation (50-250 mg/L) and time were studied. The isotherm of Langmuir, Frendluch and temkin models studied. The Langmuir model was the best to explain the adsorption process, maximum uptake was 136.67 mg/g at 25Co of methyl orange dye. Equilibrium reached after four hours of contact for most adsorbents.The values of thermodynamic parameters ∆G were negative at various temperatures, so the process spontaneous, while ∆H values were 16683 j/mol and ∆S values was 60.82 j/mol.k.
Copper, 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 MoreFree Space Optics (FSO) plays a vital role in modern wireless communications due to its advantages over fiber optics and RF techniques where a transmission of huge bandwidth and access to remote places become possible. The specific aim of this research is to analyze the Bit-Error Rate (BER) for FSO communication system when the signal is sent the over medium of turbulence channel, where the fading channel is described by the Gamma-Gamma model. The signal quality is improved by using Optical Space-Time Block- Code (OSTBC) and then the BER will be reduced. Optical 2×2 Alamouti scheme required 14 dB bit energy to noise ratio (Eb/N0) at 10-5 bit error rate (BER) which gives 3.5 dB gain as compared to no diversity scheme. Th
... Show MoreDifferent injection material types were tried in the injection of soft clay, such as lime (L), silica fume (SF), and leycobond-h (LH). In this study, experiments were made to study the effect of injection on soft clay consolidation settlement. A sample of natural soft clayey soil was investigated in the laboratory and the sample was injected with each of the grout materials used, L, SF, L + SF, and L + SF + LH. A 20 cm3 of each slurry grout was conducted into the soil, which was compacted in California Bearing Ratio (CBR) mold and cured for 7 days, and then the sample was loaded to 80 N load by a circular steel footing 60 mm in diameter. The settlement was r
Neural cryptography deals with the problem of “key exchange” between two neural networks by using the mutual learning concept. The two networks exchange their outputs (in bits) and the key between two communicating parties ar eventually represented in the final learned weights, when the two networks are said to be synchronized. Security of neural synchronization is put at risk if an attacker is capable of synchronizing with any of the two parties during the training process.
Shadow detection and removal is an important task when dealing with color outdoor images. Shadows are generated by a local and relative absence of light. Shadows are, first of all, a local decrease in the amount of light that reaches a surface. Secondly, they are a local change in the amount of light rejected by a surface toward the observer. Most shadow detection and segmentation methods are based on image analysis. However, some factors will affect the detection result due to the complexity of the circumstances. In this paper a method of segmentation test present to detect shadows from an image and a function concept is used to remove the shadow from an image.
Diabetes is one of the increasing chronic diseases, affecting millions of people around the earth. Diabetes diagnosis, its prediction, proper cure, and management are compulsory. Machine learning-based prediction techniques for diabetes data analysis can help in the early detection and prediction of the disease and its consequences such as hypo/hyperglycemia. In this paper, we explored the diabetes dataset collected from the medical records of one thousand Iraqi patients. We applied three classifiers, the multilayer perceptron, the KNN and the Random Forest. We involved two experiments: the first experiment used all 12 features of the dataset. The Random Forest outperforms others with 98.8% accuracy. The second experiment used only five att
... Show MoreEye Detection is used in many applications like pattern recognition, biometric, surveillance system and many other systems. In this paper, a new method is presented to detect and extract the overall shape of one eye from image depending on two principles Helmholtz & Gestalt. According to the principle of perception by Helmholz, any observed geometric shape is perceptually "meaningful" if its repetition number is very small in image with random distribution. To achieve this goal, Gestalt Principle states that humans see things either through grouping its similar elements or recognize patterns. In general, according to Gestalt Principle, humans see things through genera
... Show MoreAs we live in the era of the fourth technological revolution, it has become necessary to use artificial intelligence to generate electric power through sustainable solar energy, especially in Iraq and what it has gone through in terms of crises and what it suffers from a severe shortage of electric power because of the wars and calamities it went through. During that period of time, its impact is still evident in all aspects of daily life experienced by Iraqis because of the remnants of wars, siege, terrorism, wrong policies ruling before and later, regional interventions and their consequences, such as the destruction of electric power stations and the population increase, which must be followed by an increase in electric power stations,
... Show MoreAbstract
The public budget in Iraq is still prepared according to the traditional base that allocates the amounts of budget the current year based on the budget of previous year with an increase in estimations with random proportions without connecting the input (financial, human resources and asset )with their output (quantitatively and qualitatively)this caused waste and lose in the available resources therefore the output of budget showed be adapted is such a way that achieving connection between its input and output and to be appropriate with the organizational structure of the state without intrinsic change in its work .this may be realized by adopting the accounting of
... Show More