This study was undertaken to introduce a fast, accurate, selective, simple and environment-friendly colorimetric method to determine iron (II) concentration in different lipstick brands imported or manufactured locally in Baghdad, Iraq. The samples were collected from 500-Iraqi dinars stores to establish routine tests using the spectrophotometric method and compared with a new microfluidic paper-based analytical device (µPAD) platform as an alternative to cost-effective conventional instrumentation such as Atomic Absorption Spectroscopy (AAS). This method depends on the reaction between iron (II) with iron(II) selective chelator 1, 10-phenanthroline(phen) in the presence of reducing agent hydroxylamine (HOA) and sodium acetate (NaOAc) buffer to yield a reddish/orange colour change proportional to the iron(II) concentration measured at λmax = 510 nm. Under optimum conditions, the calibration curve was linear in the range between (0.5-150) mg L-1 with a limit of detection of 0.09 mg L-1. Compared to a spectrophotometric detection method, µPAD measured colour intensity using captured images using Samsung mobile phone and image J program to give proof of concept that µPAD platform fulfils the purpose of accuracy and at the same time remaining cost-effective and simplistic to be used in both developing and developed countries gave same linear calibration curve with a limit of detection 0.12 mg L-1. ANOVA test was used to compare the proposed method results with conventional method results showing the method was accepted. The antimicrobial activity showed no significant effect from lipstick samples on tested microbes.
The pervaporation using a commercial hydrophilic ceramic membrane supplied from PERVATECH was conducted. The dehydration of ethanol/ water system was used as a model for the pervaporation study. Pervaporation experiments of ethanol/water system were carried out in the temperature range of 303-343K, ethanol concentration in the feed 10-90 vol. % and the feed flow rate in the range of 0.5-10 L/min. In this work, the effect of operation parameters on permeates fluxes as well as permeates separation factors have been studied. The Water flux is strongly dependent on the temperature; it increased with increasing in temperature, which in turn decreased the selectivity of membrane to water molecules.
In addition water flux was decr
... Show MoreBreast cancer is a heterogeneous disease characterized by molecular complexity. This research utilized three genetic expression profiles—gene expression, deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) methylation, and micro ribonucleic acid (miRNA) expression—to deepen the understanding of breast cancer biology and contribute to the development of a reliable survival rate prediction model. During the preprocessing phase, principal component analysis (PCA) was applied to reduce the dimensionality of each dataset before computing consensus features across the three omics datasets. By integrating these datasets with the consensus features, the model's ability to uncover deep connections within the data was significantly improved. The proposed multimodal deep
... Show MoreThe support vector machine, also known as SVM, is a type of supervised learning model that can be used for classification or regression depending on the datasets. SVM is used to classify data points by determining the best hyperplane between two or more groups. Working with enormous datasets, on the other hand, might result in a variety of issues, including inefficient accuracy and time-consuming. SVM was updated in this research by applying some non-linear kernel transformations, which are: linear, polynomial, radial basis, and multi-layer kernels. The non-linear SVM classification model was illustrated and summarized in an algorithm using kernel tricks. The proposed method was examined using three simulation datasets with different sample
... Show MoreBN RASHİD, 2023
Transit agencies constantly need information about system operations and passengers to support their regular scheduling and operation planning processes. The lack of these processes and cultural motivations to use public transportations contributes enormously to the reliance on the private cars rather than public transportation, resulting in traffic congestions. The traffic congestions occur mainly during peak hours and the accidents happening as a result of road accidents and construction works. This study investigates the effects of weekday and weekend travel variability on peak hours of the passenger flow distribution on bus lines, which can effectively reflect the degree of traffic congestion. A study of passen
... Show MoreIn Iraq, because of the dramatic turnovers facing the country for three decades, pharmacists continue to experience significant professional challenges in both the public and private sectors. The present study aimed to explore the professional challenges and obstacles facing Iraqi pharmacists working in public hospitals. This qualitative study included face-to-face semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions with hospital pharmacists. The participants were selected purposefully (with ≥ 3 years of experience) to work at governmental hospitals in Karbala province between December 2022 and April 2023. The audio-recording interviews were scripted. Thematic analyses were used to generate themes and subthemes from the interview
... Show MoreHumor is an interesting phenomenon that has been studied widely, yet it is considered a universal trait that cannot be an old subject for a study. This study is conducted to investigate humor from a universal pragmatic lens in a stand-up comedy show, namely, You Wanna Hear Something Crazy?. It aims to study humor as a coin with two sides, the production side and the understanding side. To achieve the aim of the study, the researchers use an eclectic contains Grice’s CP model (1975) and Habermas’s UP model (1979, 1984, 1987, 1998). The study has noted that while using the observance and the non-observance of the cooperative maxims to produce humor, the universal validity claims of truth, sincerity, and normative rightness for rea
... Show MoreThis work presents a computer studying to simulate the charging process of a dust grain immersed in plasma with negative ions. The study based on the discrete charging model. The model was developed to take into account the effect of negative ions on charging process of dust grain.
The model was translated to a numerical calculation by using computer programs. The program of model has been written with FORTRAN programming language to calculate the charging process for a dust particle in plasma with negative ion, the time distribution of a dust charge, number charge equilibrium and charging time for different value of ηe (ratio of number density of electron to number density of positive ion).