Cutaneous leishmaniasis is a disease caused by Leishmania tropica parasite. Current treatments for this parasite are undesirable because of their toxicity, resistance, and high cost. Macrophages are key players against pathogens. Nitric oxide (NO), a molecule produce by immune cells, controls intracellular killing of pathogens during infection. Silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) demonstrated broad-spectrum activity against various types of infectious diseases. It has the ability to stimulate oxygen species production.  This study aims to analyze the macrophages activation through NO production and estimate the cytotoxicity based on the lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release upon exposure to L. tropica and

Organophosphorus insecticide and growth regulator namely Ethephon (2-chloroethylphosphonic acid) are widely used as a ripening process accelerator and a cultivation duration inhibitor. Pomegranate extract (PPE) has recently been taken into consideration due to its pharmacological effects especially those associated with renal diseases. Thus, this study aims to investigate the possible protective effect of PPE against ethephon-induced nephrotoxicity in rats. In this study four groups of adult male rats were divided into control group, PPE 400 mg/kg group, Ethephon 250 mg/kg group, and finally, PPE + Ethephon group (treated with the same dose of PPE group and Ethephon group). In the current study, kidney function parameters (KIM-1, creatin

There are still areas around the world suffer from severe shortage of freshwater supplies. Desalination technologies are not widely used due to their high energy usage, cost, and environmental damaging effects. In this study, a mathematical model of single-bed adsorption desalination system using silica gel-water as working pair is developed and validated via earlier experiments. A very good match between the model predictions and the experimental results is recorded. The objective is to reveal the factors affecting the productivity of fresh water and cooling effect in the solar adsorption system. The proposed model is setup for solving within the commercially-available software (Engineering Equation Solver). It is implemented to so

Autonomous systems are these systems which power themselves from the available ambient energies in addition to their duties. In the next few years, autonomous systems will pervade society and they will find their ways into different applications related to health, security, comfort and entertainment. Piezoelectric harvesters are possible energy converters which can be used to convert the available ambient vibration energy into electrical energy. In this contribution, an energy harvesting cantilever array with magnetic tuning including three piezoelectric bimorphs is investigated theoretically and experimentally. Other than harvester designs proposed before, this array is easy to manufacture and insensitive to manufacturi

Background: Multiple sclerosis is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system of unknown etiology. Different techniques and magnetic resonance image sequences are widely used and compared to each other to improve the detection of multiple sclerosis lesions in the spinal cord. Objective: To evaluate the ability of MRI short tau inversion recovery sequences in improvementof multiple sclerosis spinal cord lesion detection when compared to T2 weighted image sequences. Type of the study: A retrospective study. Methods: this study conducted from 15thAugust 2013 to 30thJune 2014 at Baghdad teaching hospital. 22 clinically definite MS patients with clinical features suggestive of spinal cord involvement,

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the effect of coating titanium (Ti) dental implant with polyether ketone ketone (PEKK) polymer using magnetron sputtering on osseointegration, trying to overcome some of the problems associated with Ti alloys. Material and Methods: Implants were prepared from grade (II) commercially pure titanium (CP Ti), then laser was used to induce roughness on the surface of Ti. PEKK was deposited on the surface of Ti implants by radiofrequency (RF) magnetron sputtering technique. The implants were divided in to three groups: without coating (Ls), with PEKK coating using argon (Ar) as sputtering gas (Ls-PEKK-Ar), and with PEKK coating using nitrogen (N) as sputtering gas (Ls-PEKK-N). All the implants were implante