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 two most popular models inwell-known count regression models are Poisson and negative binomial regression models. Poisson regression is a generalized linear model form of regression analysis used to model count data and contingency tables. Poisson regression assumes the response variable Y has a Poisson distribution, and assumes the logarithm of its expected value can be modeled by a linear combination of unknown parameters. Negative binomial regression is similar to regular multiple regression except that the dependent (Y) variables an observed count that follows the negative binomial distribution. This research studies some factors affecting divorce using Poisson and negative binomial regression models. The factors are unemplo
... Show MoreDetecting and subtracting the Motion objects from backgrounds is one of the most important areas. The development of cameras and their widespread use in most areas of security, surveillance, and others made face this problem. The difficulty of this area is unstable in the classification of the pixels (foreground or background). This paper proposed a suggested background subtraction algorithm based on the histogram. The classification threshold is adaptively calculated according to many tests. The performance of the proposed algorithms was compared with state-of-the-art methods in complex dynamic scenes.
Asmari is the main productive reservoir in Abu Ghirab oilfield in the south-east part of Iraq. It has history production extends from 1976 up to now with several close periods. Recently, the reservoir suffers some problems in production, which are abstracted as water production rising with oil production declining in most wells. The water problem type of the field and wells is identified by using Chan's diagnostic plots (water oil ratio (WOR) and derivative water oil ratio (WOR') against time). The analytical results show that water problem is caused by the channeling due to high permeability zones, high water saturation zones, and faults or fracturing. The numerical approach is also used to study the water movement insi
... Show MoreThe gas-lift method is crucial for maintaining oil production, particularly from an established field when the natural energy of the reservoirs is depleted. To maximize oil production, a major field's gas injection rate must be distributed as efficiently as possible across its gas-lift network system. Common gas-lift optimization techniques may lose their effectiveness and become unable to replicate the gas-lift optimum in a large network system due to problems with multi-objective, multi-constrained & restricted gas injection rate distribution. The main objective of the research is to determine the possibility of using the genetic algorithm (GA) technique to achieve the optimum distribution for the continuous gas-lift injectio
... Show MoreOvako Working Postures Analyzing System (OWAS) is a widely used method for studying awkward working postures in workplaces. This study with OWAS, analyzed working postures for manual material handling of laminations at stacking workstation for water pump assembly line in Electrical Industrial Company (EICO) / Baghdad. A computer program, WinOWAS, was used for the study. In real life workstation was found that more than 26% of the working postures observed were classified as either AC2 (slightly harmful), AC3 (distinctly harmful). Postures that needed to be corrected soon (AC3) and corresponding tasks, were identified. The most stressful tasks observed were grasping, handling, and positioning of the laminations from workers. The construct
... Show MoreThis research presents a particular designing strategy for a free form of surfaces, constructed by the lofting design method. The regarded surfaces were created by sliding a B-spline curves (profile curves), in addition to describing an automatic procedure for selective identification of sampling points in reverse engineering applications using Coordinate Measurement Machine. Two models have been implemented from (Ureol material) to represent the different cases of B-spline types to clarify its scope of application. The interior data of the desired surfaces was designed by MATLAB software, which then were transformed to UG-NX9 software for connecting the sections that were designed in MATLAB program and obtaining G-code programs for the
... Show MoreThe Iraqi construction industry suffers from many issues that lead to many design errors, clashes, delays and cost overruns. Therefore, applying constructability will prevent these issues from happening, as it has proven its positive effect in different projects around the world. The goal of this paper is to use building information modelling (BIM) to assess the constructability, provide the opportunities for the project stakeholders to choose the best constructable design alternative and find the affection of applying constructability on project cost. The practical side of this research consists of two parts: in the first part, 37 factors are collected from the literature review as factors that effect on constructability. After tha
... Show MoreArcHydro is a model developed for building hydrologic information systems to synthesize geospatial and temporal water resources data that support hydrologic modeling and analysis. Raster-based digital elevation models (DEMs) play an important role in distributed hydrologic modeling supported by geographic information systems (GIS). Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data have been used to derive hydrological features, which serve as inputs to various models. Currently, elevation data are available from several major sources and at different spatial resolutions. Detailed delineation of drainage networks is the first step for many natural resource management studies. Compared with interpretation from aerial photographs or topographic maps, auto
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