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.
An optimization calculation is made to find the optimum properties of combined quadrupole lens which consists of electrostatic and magnetic lens. Both chromatic and spherical aberration coefficients are reduced to minimum values and the achromatic aberration is found for many cases. These calculations are achieved with the aid of transfer matrices method and using rectangular model of field distribution, where the path of charged-particles beam traversing the field has been determined by solving the trajectory equation of motion and then the optical properties for lens have been computed with the aid of the beam trajectory along the lens axis. The computations have been concentrated on determining the chromatic and spher
... Show MoreThe compound Fe0.5CoxMg0.95-xO where (x= 0.025, 0.05, 0.075, 0.1) was prepared via the sol-gel technique. The crystalline nature of magnesium oxide was studied by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analysis, and the size of the sample crystals, ranging between (16.91-19.62nm), increased, while the lattice constant within the band (0.5337-0.4738 nm) decreased with increasing the cobalt concentration. The morphology of the specimens was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) which shows images forming spherical granules in addition to the presence of interconnected chips. The presence of the elements involved in the super
It is often needed to have circuits that can display the decimal representation of a binary number and specifically in this paper on a 7-segment display. In this paper a circuit that can display the decimal equivalent of an n-bit binary number is designed and it’s behavior is described using Verilog Hardware Descriptive Language (HDL). This HDL program is then used to configure an FPGA to implement the designed circuit.
The Manganese doped zinc sulfide nanoparticles of the cubic zinc blende structure with the average crystallite size of about 3.56 nm were synthesized using a coprecipitation method using Thioglycolic Acid as an external capping agent for surface modification. The ZnS:Mn2+ nanoparticles of diameter 3.56 nm were manufactured through using inexpensive precursors in an efficient and eco-friendly way. X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy are used to examine the structure, morphology and chemical composition of the nanoparticles. The antimicrobial activity of (ZnS:Mn2+) nanocrystals was investigated by measuring the diameter of inhibition zone using well diffusion mechanism
... Show MoreA simple, fast, inexpensive and sensitive method has been proposed to screen and optimize experimental factors that effecting the determination of phenylephrine hydrochloride (PHE.HCl) in pure and pharmaceutical formulations. The method is based on the development of brown-colored charge transfer (CT) complex with p-Bromanil (p-Br) in an alkaline medium (pH=9) with 1.07 min after heating at 80 °C. ‘Design of Experiments’ (DOE) employing ‘Central Composite Face Centered Design’ (CCF) and ‘Response Surface Methodology’ (RSM) were applied as an improvement to traditional ‘One Variable at Time’ (OVAT) approach to evaluate the effects of variations in selected factors (volume of 5×10-3 M p-Br, heating time, and temperature) on
... Show MoreThis study aimed to incorporate hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (nHA) or amorphous calcium phosphate nanoparticles (nACP) into a self-etch primer (SEP) to develop a simplified orthodontic bonding system with remineralizing and enamel preserving properties.
nHA and nACP were incorporated into a commercial SEP (Transbond™ plus) in 7% weight ratio and compared with the plain SEP as a control. Shear bond strengths (SBS), enamel damage, and adhesive remnant index (ARI) scores were evaluated at 24 h
A fluorescence microscopy considered as a powerful imaging tool in biology and medicine. In addition to useful signal obtained from fluorescence microscopy, there are some defects in its images such as random variation in brightness, noise that caused by photon detection and some background pixels in the acquired fluorescence microscopic images appear wrongly auto-fluorescence property. All these practical limitations have a negative impact on the correct vision and analysis of the fluorescent microscope users. Our research enters the field of automation of image processing and image analysis using image processing techniques and applying this processing and analysis on one of the very important experiments in biology science. This research
... Show MoreThe energy requirements of corn silage harvesters and the application of precision agricultural techniques are essential for efficient and productive agricultural practices. The article aims to review previous studies on the energy requirements needed for different corn silage harvesting machines, and on the other hand, to present methods for measuring corn silage productivity directly in the field and monitoring it based on microcontrollers and artificial intelligence techniques. The process of making corn silage is done by cutting green fodder plants into small pieces, so special harvesters are used for this, called corn silage harvesters. The purpose of harvesting corn silage is to efficiently collect and store as many digestible nutrien
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