Acinetobacter baumannii (A. baumannii ) is considered a critical healthcare problem for patients in intensive care units due to its high ability to be multidrug-resistant to most commercially available antibiotics. The aim of this study is to develop a colorimetric assay to quantitatively detect the target DNA of A. baumannii based on unmodified gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) from different clinical samples (burns, surgical wounds, sputum, blood and urine). A total of thirty-six A. baumannii clinical isolates were collected from five Iraqi hospitals in Erbil and Mosul provinces within the period from September 2020 to January 2021. Bacterial isolation and biochemical identification of isolates were carried out followed by DNA extraction from 36 isolates and six negative ATCC strains (Salmonalle typhi, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonia, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Enterobacter aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aures) and only one positive control ATCC A. baumannii using Phenol/Chloroform method. AuNPs were synthesized using the citrate reduction method and examined by XDR, FTIR, UV-VIS, FE-SEM, and TEM. The optimized colorimetric assay was employed based on unmodified spherical AuNPs and PCR amplification of 16S rRNA intergenic spacer sequences (ITS) with species-specific DNA oligo-targeters. Detection and optimization of A. baumannii amplicons using unmodified AuNPs were performed based on species-specific DNA oligonucleotide. The AuNPs assay was able to colorimetrically detect and distinguish A. baumannii from other ATCC bacterial isolates. The turnaround time of this assay was about 3 hours, including sample preparation and amplification, to show (0.025-6 ngµl-1) as a detection limit of DNA concentration. The efficacy of colorimetric detection was proved to effectively diagnose A. baumannii isolates with high sensitivity, simplicity, and robustness to rapidly diagnose A. baumannii isolates from different clinical samples.
Adsorption techniques are widely used to remove organics pollutants from waste water particularly, when using low cost adsorbent available in Iraq. Al-Khriet powder which was found in legs of Typha Domingensis is used as bio sorbent for removing phenolic compounds from aqueous solution. The influence of adsorbent dosage and contact time on removal percentage and adsorb ate amount of phenol and 4- nitro phenol onto Al-Khriet were studied. The highest adsorption capacity was for 4-nitrophenol 91.5% than for phenol 82% with 50 mg/L concentration, 0.5 gm. dosage of adsorbent and pH 6 under a batch condition. The experimental data were tested using different isotherm models. The results show that Freundlich model resulted in the best fit also
... Show MoreDevelopment and population expansion have the lion's share of driving up the fuel cost. Biodiesel has considerable attention as a renewable, ecologically friendly and alternative fuel source. In this study, CaO nanocatalyst is produced from mango leaves as a catalysis for the transesterification of waste cooking oil (WCO) to biodiesel. The mango tree is a perennial plant, and its fruit holds significant economic worth due to its abundance of vitamins and minerals. This plant has a wide geographical range and its leaves can be utilized without any negative impact on its growth and yield. An analysis was conducted to determine the calcium content in the fallen leaves, revealing a significant quantity of calcium that holds potential fo
... Show MoreThe use of biopolymer material Chitosan impregnated granular activated carbon CHGAC as adsorbent in the removal of lead ions pb.2+ from aqueous solution was studied using batch adsorption mode. The prepared CHGAC was characterized by Scanning Electronic Microscopy (SEM) and atomic-absorption pectrophotometer. The adsorption of lead ions onto Chitosan-impregnated granular activated carbon was examined as a function of adsorbent weight, pH and
contact time in Batch system. Langmuir and Freundlich models were employed to analyze the resulting experimental data demonstrated that better fitted by Langmuir isotherm model than Freundlich model, with good correlation coefficient. The maximum adsorption capacity calculated f
<p>Analyzing X-rays and computed tomography-scan (CT scan) images using a convolutional neural network (CNN) method is a very interesting subject, especially after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In this paper, a study is made on 423 patients’ CT scan images from Al-Kadhimiya (Madenat Al Emammain Al Kadhmain) hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, to diagnose if they have COVID or not using CNN. The total data being tested has 15000 CT-scan images chosen in a specific way to give a correct diagnosis. The activation function used in this research is the wavelet function, which differs from CNN activation functions. The convolutional wavelet neural network (CWNN) model proposed in this paper is compared with regular convol
... Show MoreIn this study, oxidative desulfurization of dibenzothiophene (DBT) with H2O2 as an oxidant was studied, whereas the catalyst used was zirconium oxide supported on Activated carbon (AC). Zirconium oxide (ZrO2) was impregnated over prepared activated carbon (AC) and characterized by various techniques such as XRD, FTIR, BET, SEM, and EDX. This composite was used as a heterogeneous catalyst for oxidation desulfurization of simulated oil. The results of this study showed that ZrO2/AC composite exhibited significant catalytic activity and stability, effectively lowering sulfur content under mild conditions. Factors such as reaction temperature (30, 40, 50, 60°C), time (5, 10, 15,20,30,60, 80 100 min), catalyst dose (0.3, 0.5,
... Show MoreAdsorption techniques are widely used to remove certain classes of pollutants from wastewater. Phenolic compounds represent one of the problematic groups. Na-Y zeolite has been synthesized from locally available Iraqi kaolin clay. Characterization of the prepared zeolite was made by XRD and surface area measurement using N2 adsorption. Both synthetic Na-Y zeolite and kaolin clay have been tested for adsorption of 4-Nitro-phenol in batch mode experiments. Maximum removal efficiencies of 90% and 80% were obtained using the prepared zeolite and kaolin clay, respectively. Kinetics and equilibrium adsorption isotherms were investigated. Investigations showed that both Langmuir and Freundlich isotherms fit the experimental data quite well. On the
... Show More<p>Analyzing X-rays and computed tomography-scan (CT scan) images using a convolutional neural network (CNN) method is a very interesting subject, especially after coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. In this paper, a study is made on 423 patients’ CT scan images from Al-Kadhimiya (Madenat Al Emammain Al Kadhmain) hospital in Baghdad, Iraq, to diagnose if they have COVID or not using CNN. The total data being tested has 15000 CT-scan images chosen in a specific way to give a correct diagnosis. The activation function used in this research is the wavelet function, which differs from CNN activation functions. The convolutional wavelet neural network (CWNN) model proposed in this paper is compared with regular convol
... Show MoreRemoval of heavy metal ions such as, cadmium ion (Cd 2+) and lead ion (Pb 2+) from aqueous solution onto Eichhornia (water hyacinth) activated carbon (EAC) by physiochemical activation with potassium hydroxide (KOH) and carbon dioxide (CO2) as the activating agents were investigated. The Eichhornia activated carbon was characterized by Brunauer Emmett Teller (BET), Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) techniques. Whereas, the effect of adsorbent dosage, contact time of pH, and metal ion concentration on the adsorption process have been investigated using the batch process t
Computations of the relative permeability curves were made through their representation by two functions for wetting and nonwetting phases. Each function contains one parameter that controls the shape of the relative permeability curves. The values of these parameters are chosen to minimize an objective function, that is represented as a weighted sum of the squared differences between experimentally measured data and the corresponding data calculated by a mathematical model simulating the experiment. These data comprise the pressure drop across core samples and the recovery response of the displacing phase. Two mathematical models are constructed in this study to simulate incompressible, one-dimensional, two-phase flow. The first model d
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