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.
Contours extraction from two dimensional echocardiographic images has been a challenge in digital image processing. This is essentially due to the heavy noise, poor quality of these images and some artifacts like papillary muscles, intra-cavity structures as chordate, and valves that can interfere with the endocardial border tracking. In this paper, we will present a technique to extract the contours of heart boundaries from a sequence of echocardiographic images, where it started with pre-processing to reduce noise and produce better image quality. By pre-processing the images, the unclear edges are avoided, and we can get an accurate detection of both heart boundary and movement of heart valves.
This research aims to test the ability of glass waste powder to adsorb cadmium from aqueous solutions. The glass wastes were collected from the Glass Manufacturing Factory in Ramadi. The effect of concentration and reaction time on sorption was tested through a series of laboratory experiments. Four Cd concentrations (20, 40, 60, and 80) as each concentration was tested ten times for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, and 50 min. Solid (glass wastes) to liquid was 2g to 30ml was fixed in each experiment where the total volume of the solution was 30ml. The pH, total dissolved salts and electrical conductivity were measured at 30ºC. The equilibrium concentration was determined at 25 minutes, thereafter it was noted that the sorption
... Show MoreThe present work is to investigate the feasibility of removal vanadium (V) and nickel (Ni) from Iraqi heavy gas oil using activated bentonite. Different operating parameters such as the degree of bentonite activation, activated bentonite loading, and operating time was investigated on the effect of heavy metal removal efficiency. Experimental results of adsorption test show that Langmuir isotherm predicts well the experimental data and the maximum bentonite uptake of vanadium was 30 mg/g. The bentonite activated with 50 wt% H2SO4 shows a (75%) removal for both Ni and V. Results indicated that within approximately 5 hrs, the vanadium removal efficiencies were 33, 45, and 60% at vanadium loadings of 1
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The study of oxygen mass transfer was conducted in a laboratory scale 5 liter stirred bioreactor equipped with one Rushton turbine impeller. The effects of superficial gas velocity, impeller speed, power input and liquid viscosity on the oxygen mass transfer were considered. Air/ water and air/CMC systems were used as a liquid media for this study. The concentration of CMC was ranging from 0.5 to 3 w/v. The experimental results show that volumetric oxygen mass transfer coefficient increases with the increase in the superficial gas velocity and impeller speed and decreases with increasing liquid viscosity. The experimental results of kla were correlated with a mathematical correlation des
... Show MoreModified bentonite has been used as effective sorbent material for the removal of acidic dye (methyl orange) from aqueous solution in batch system. The natural bentonite has been modified using cationic surfactant (cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide) in order to obtain an efficient sorbent through converting the properties of bentonite from hydrophilic to organophilic. The characteristics of the natural and modified bentonite were examined through several analyses such as Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), and Surface area. The batch study was provided the maximum dye removal efficiency of 88.75 % with a sorption capacity of 555.56 mg/g at specified conditions (150 min, pH= 2, 250 rpm, and 0.
... Show MoreCoagulation - flocculation are basic chemical engineering method in the treatment of metal-bearing industrial wastewater because it removes colloidal particles, some soluble compounds and very fine solid suspensions initially present in the wastewater by destabilization and formation of flocs. This research was conducted to study the feasibility of using natural coagulant such as okra and mallow and chemical coagulant such as alum for removing Cu and increase the removal efficiency and reduce the turbidity of treated water. Fourier transform Infrared (FTIR) was carried out for okra and mallow before and after coagulant to determine their type of functional groups. Carbonyl and hydroxyl functional groups on the surface of
... Show MoreIn this work, a local sunflower husk (SFH) was used as a natural surface for removing Basic Green-4 (BG4) dye, as a watersoluble pollutant. The effect of initial concentration, contact time, the mass of surface of the dye with the SFH as well as the medium temperature was studied. The application of Langmuir, Freundlich isotherms on the collected data of the adsorption process found to harmonize to Freundlich equation more than that of Langmuir. However, the adsorbed mass of BG4 dye showed a direct increase with the increase of SFH mass and equilibrium was achieved within a 60min window. The interaction of BG4 with SFH surface was spontaneous and exothermic. The empirical kinetic outcomes at ambient temperatures were applied to pseudo 1st a
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