Uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) is problematic and still the leading cause of urinary tract infections worldwide. It is developed resistance against most antibiotics. The investigation, surveillance system, and efficient strategy will facilitate selecting an appropriate treatment that could control the bacterial distribution. The present study aims to investigate the epidemiology and associated risk factors of uropathogenic E. coli and to study their antibiotic resistance patterns. 1585 midstream urine specimens were collected from symptomatic urinary tract infections (UTI) patients (225 males and 1360 females) admitted to Zakho emergency hospital, Zakho, Kurdistan Region, Iraq from January 2016 until the end of December 2018. Specimens were inoculated on blood and MacConkey plates and incubated at 37оC for 24 hours. Uropathogenic E. coli was diagnosed based on gram staining, colony characteristics, and standard biochemical tests in accordance with local standards and guidelines. All isolates were screened for their antibiogram pattern using the disk diffusion method based on the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute guidelines. The results showed that out of 1585 urine specimens, 1026 (64.7%) were UTIs positive with a statistically higher rate in 2016 (83.6%) (P< 0.0001). The UTIs frequency in females was significantly higher than males (P< 0.0001). Generally, the uropathogenic E. coli represented 21.1% with the highest level in 2016 (22.9%). The uropathogenic E. coli rate was higher, statistically not significant, in females (21.4%) than males (18.5%) (P=0.4946). Additionally, through the three years of study, uropathogenic E. coli (UPEC) was in high frequency in February and May 2016. The female’s age group from 20 to 39 years was the most vulnerable (46%) form total infected females, while those from 70-74 years (1%) were the least susceptible in males and females. A high percentage (80.56 %) of multidrug resistance E. coli isolates was observed with high resistance against -lactamase and macrolides antibiotics. However, higher sensitivity was towards imipenem and meropenem. In conclusion, the wrong and overuse of antibiotics will increase the resistance rate of E. coli. For this reason, proper use of available antibiotics is necessary. Also, the educational programs and periodic monitoring of antimicrobial susceptibility are essential for reducing the antibiotic resistance rate.
Due to the high mobility and dynamic topology of the FANET network, maintaining communication links between UAVs is a challenging task. The topology of these networks is more dynamic than traditional mobile networks, which raises challenges for the routing protocol. The existing routing protocols for these networks partly fail to detect network topology changes. Few methods have recently been proposed to overcome this problem due to the rapid changes of network topology. We try to solve this problem by designing a new dynamic routing method for a group of UAVs using Hybrid SDN technology (SDN and a distributed routing protocol) with a highly dynamic topology. Comparison of the proposed method performance and two other algorithms is simula
... Show MoreBiodiesel as an attractive energy source; a low-cost and green synthesis technique was utilized for biodiesel preparation via waste cooking oil methanolysis using waste snail shell derived catalyst. The present work aimed to investigate the production of biodiesel fuel from waste materials. The catalyst was greenly synthesized from waste snail shells throughout a calcination process at different calcination time of 2–4 h and temperature of 750–950 ◦C. The catalyst samples were characterized using X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), Energy Dispersive X-ray (EDX), and Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR). The reaction variables varying in the range of 10:1–30:1 M ratio of MeOH: oil, 3–11 wt% catalyst loading, 50–
... Show MoreThe electrocoagulation process became one of the most important technologies used for water treatment processes in the last few years. It’s the preferred method to remove suspended solids and heavy metals from water for treating drinking water and wastewater from textile, diary, and electroplating factories. This research aims to study the effect of using the electrocoagulation process with aluminum electrodes on the removal efficiency of suspended solids and turbidity presented in raw water and optimizing by the response surface methodology (RSM). The most important variables studied in this research included electrode spacing, the applied voltage, and the operating time of the electrocoagulation process. The samples
... Show MoreProduction of fatty acid esters (biodiesel) from oleic acid and 2-ethylhexanol using sulfated zirconia as solid catalyst for the production of biodiesel was investigated in this work.
The parameters studied were temperature of reaction (100 to 130°C), molar ratio of alcohol to free fatty acid (1:1 to 3:1), concentration of catalyst (0.5 to 3%wt), mixing speed (500 to 900 rpm) and types of sulfated zirconia (i.e modified, commercial, prepared catalyst according to literature and reused catalyst). The results show the best conversion to biodiesel was 97.74% at conditions of 130°C, 3:1, 2wt% and 650 rpm using modified catalyst respectively. Also, modified c
... Show MoreThe clayey soils have the capability to swell and shrink with the variation in moisture content. Soil stabilization is a well-known technique, which is implemented to improve the geotechnical properties of soils. The massive quantities of waste materials are resulting from modern industry methods create disposal hazards in addition to environmental problems. The steel industry has a waste that can be used with low strength and weak engineering properties soils. This study is carried out to evaluate the effect of steel slag (SS) as a by-product of the geotechnical properties of clayey soil. A series of laboratory tests were conducted on natural and stabilized soils. SS was added by 0, 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20% to the soil.
... Show MoreAn intrusion detection system (IDS) is key to having a comprehensive cybersecurity solution against any attack, and artificial intelligence techniques have been combined with all the features of the IoT to improve security. In response to this, in this research, an IDS technique driven by a modified random forest algorithm has been formulated to improve the system for IoT. To this end, the target is made as one-hot encoding, bootstrapping with less redundancy, adding a hybrid features selection method into the random forest algorithm, and modifying the ranking stage in the random forest algorithm. Furthermore, three datasets have been used in this research, IoTID20, UNSW-NB15, and IoT-23. The results are compared with the three datasets men
... Show MoreThe transmitting and receiving of data consume the most resources in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The energy supplied by the battery is the most important resource impacting WSN's lifespan in the sensor node. Therefore, because sensor nodes run from their limited battery, energy-saving is necessary. Data aggregation can be defined as a procedure applied for the elimination of redundant transmissions, and it provides fused information to the base stations, which in turn improves the energy effectiveness and increases the lifespan of energy-constrained WSNs. In this paper, a Perceptually Important Points Based Data Aggregation (PIP-DA) method for Wireless Sensor Networks is suggested to reduce redundant data before sending them to the
... Show MoreAbstract In this study, an investigation is conducted to realise the possibility of organic materials use in radio frequency (RF) electronics for RF-energy harvesting. Iraqi palm tree remnants mixed with nickel oxide nanoparticles hosted in polyethylene, INP substrates, is proposed for this study. Moreover, a metamaterial (MTM) antenna is printed on the created INP substrate of 0.8 mm thickness using silver nanoparticles conductive ink. The fabricated antenna performances are instigated numerically than validated experimentally in terms of S11 spectra and radiation patterns. It is found that the proposed antenna shows an ultra-wide band matching bandwidth to cover the frequencies from 2.4 to 10 GHz with bore-sight gain variation from 2.2 to
... Show MoreCassava, a significant crop in Africa, Asia, and South America, is a staple food for millions. However, classifying cassava species using conventional color, texture, and shape features is inefficient, as cassava leaves exhibit similarities across different types, including toxic and non-toxic varieties. This research aims to overcome the limitations of traditional classification methods by employing deep learning techniques with pre-trained AlexNet as the feature extractor to accurately classify four types of cassava: Gajah, Manggu, Kapok, and Beracun. The dataset was collected from local farms in Lamongan Indonesia. To collect images with agricultural research experts, the dataset consists of 1,400 images, and each type of cassava has
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