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Traditional and molecular methods for diagnosing bacterial meningitis in Erbil city, Iraq

Bacterial meningitis is a leading cause of illness and death worldwide. It is crucial for clinical and public health care, as well as disease control, to identify the meningitis-causing agent promptly. Between June 2021-February 2022, a total of 100 cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and blood samples were collected from suspected cases of meningitis admitted to Raparin Paediatric Teaching Hospital, Erbil city-Iraq. Cytochemical, cultural, and biochemical tests were conducted, and confirmed by molecular techniques. Bacterial culture findings were positive in 7% of CSF samples and just one positive among blood samples. The most common pathogens found by cultural characteristics and VITEK 2 Compact System were Staphylococcus sciuri in two cases  2%, Staphylococcus xylosus in one case  1%, Escherichia coli in two instances  2%, Enterococcus casseliflavus and Micrococcus luteus each in one case  1%. Staphylococcus sciuri, Staphylococcus  xylosus, Enterococcus casseliflavus and Micrococcus luteus were first recorded as bacterial meningitis in Erbil/Iraq. All isolates were confirmed by PCR assay. All clinical isolates were screened for some antimicrobial sensitivity, meropenem and tobramycin have been shown to be totally resistant  100%  to all isolated bacteria, furthermore, isolated E coli showed highly resistant  100  to cefotaxime, gentamycin, pencillin, ceftriaxone, rifampin, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, ceftazidime, erythromycin, ampicillin, and clindamycin, while they were sensitive (100%) to amikacin and imipenem as well as all the gram positive bacteria were resistant  100%  to optochin and sensitive (100%) to gentamycin, and trimethoprim. In bacterial meningitis patients, high C-reactive protein (CRP)  >6 mg/dl, high CSF protein  >50 mg/dl, low CSF glucose level  <40 mg/dl and high leukocyte count  >100 cells/mm3  were all substantially diagnostic.

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Publication Date
Thu Jun 16 2022
Journal Name
Clean Technologies
Performance Evaluation of Roughened Solar Air Heaters for Stretched Parameters

Artificial roughness applied to a Solar Air Heater (SAH) absorber plate is a popular technique for increasing its total thermal efficiency (ηt−th). In this paper, the influence of geometrical parameters of V-down ribs attached below the corrugated absorbing plate of a SAH on the ηt−th was examined. The impacts of key roughness parameters, including relative pitch p/e (6–12), relative height e/D (0.019–0.043), angles of attack α (30–75°), and Re (1000–20,000), were examined under real weather conditions. The SAH ηt−th roughened by V-down ribs was predicted using an in-house developed conjugate heat-transfer numerical model. The maximum SAH ηt−th was shown to be 78.8% as predicted under the steady-state condition

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Publication Date
Fri May 13 2022
Journal Name
Electronics
Fuzzy Luenberger Observer Design for Nonlinear Flexible Joint Robot Manipulator

The process of controlling a Flexible Joint Robot Manipulator (FJRM) requires additional sensors for measuring the state variables of flexible joints. Therefore, taking the elasticity into account adds a lot of complexity as all the additional sensors must be taken into account during the control process. This paper proposes a nonlinear observer that controls FJRM, without requiring equipment sensors for measuring the states. The nonlinear state equations are derived in detail for the FJRM where nonlinearity, of order three, is considered. The Takagi–Sugeno Fuzzy Model (T-SFM) technique is applied to linearize the FJRM system. The Luenberger observer is designed to estimate the unmeasured states using error correction. The develop

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Publication Date
Wed Sep 29 2021
Journal Name
Biomass Conversion And Biorefinery
Encapsulated deep eutectic solvent for esterification of free fatty acid

A novel encapsulated deep eutectic solvent (DES) was introduced for biodiesel production via a two-step process. The DES was encapsulated in medical capsules and were used to reduce the free fatty acid (FFA) content of acidic crude palm oil (ACPO) to the minimum acceptable level (< 1%). The DES was synthesized from methyltriphenylphosphonium bromide (MTPB) and p-toluenesulfonic acid (PTSA). The effects pertaining to different operating conditions such as capsule dosage, reaction time, molar ratio, and reaction temperature were optimized. The FFA content of ACPO was reduced from existing 9.61% to less than 1% under optimum operating conditions. This indicated that encapsulated MTPB-DES performed high catalytic activity in FFA esterificatio

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Publication Date
Sun Sep 30 2018
Journal Name
Iraqi Journal Of Chemical And Petroleum Engineering
Potato Starch for Enhancing the Properties of the Drilling Fluids

Different additives are used in drilling fluids when the demanded properties cannot be gotten with clays. Drilling muds needs several additives and materials to give good characteristics. There are local alternatives more suitable for enhancing the rheology and filtration of drilling fluids. An experimental work had been conducted to assess the suitability of using potato starch to enhance rheological properties and filtration in drilling mud. This study investigated the potato starch as a viscosifier and fluid losses agent in drilling fluid. Results from this study proved that rheological properties of potato starch mud increased when pH of drilling fluid is increased.  Potato starch could be used to enhance gel strength at low pH

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Publication Date
Sun Apr 30 2023
Journal Name
Iraqi Journal Of Science
User Oriented Calibration Method for Stonex X300 Terrestrial Laser Scanner

    Terrestrial laser scanners (TLSs) are 3D imaging systems that provide the most powerful 3D representation and practical solutions for various applications. Hence this is due to effective range measurements, 3D point cloud reliability, and rapid acquisition performance. Stonex X300 TOF scanner delivered better certainty in far-range than in close-range measurements due to the high noise level inherent within the data delivered from Time of Flight (TOF) scanning sensors. However, if these errors are manipulated properly using a valid calibration model, more accurate products can be obtained even from very close-range measurements. Therefore, to fill this gap, this research presents a user-oriented target-based calibration routine to

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Publication Date
Thu Jan 01 2015
Journal Name
Journal Of Materials Chemistry A
A novel approach to fabricate zeolite membranes for pervaporation processes

A method has been demonstrated to synthesise effective zeolite membranes from existing crystals without a hydrothermal synthesis step.

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Publication Date
Mon Dec 24 2018
Journal Name
Civil Engineering Journal
Artificial Neural Network Model for the Prediction of Groundwater Quality

The present article delves into the examination of groundwater quality, based on WQI, for drinking purposes in Baghdad City. Further, for carrying out the investigation, the data was collected from the Ministry of Water Resources of Baghdad, which represents water samples drawn from 114 wells in Al-Karkh and Al-Rusafa sides of Baghdad city. With the aim of further determining WQI, four water parameters such as (i) pH, (ii) Chloride (Cl), (iii) Sulfate (SO4), and (iv) Total dissolved solids (TDS), were taken into consideration. According to the computed WQI, the distribution of the groundwater samples, with respect to their quality classes such as excellent, good, poor, very poor and unfit for human drinking purpose, was found to be

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Publication Date
Sat Aug 01 2015
Journal Name
2015 37th Annual International Conference Of The Ieee Engineering In Medicine And Biology Society (embc)
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Publication Date
Sun Dec 01 2013
Journal Name
2013 Ieee International Rf And Microwave Conference (rfm)
Differential Evolution algorithm for linear frequency modulation radar signal denoising

Signal denoising is directly related to sample estimation of received signals, either by estimating the equation parameters for the target reflections or the surrounding noise and clutter accompanying the data of interest. Radar signals recorded using analogue or digital devices are not immune to noise. Random or white noise with no coherency is mainly produced in the form of random electrons, and caused by heat, environment, and stray circuitry loses. These factors influence the output signal voltage, thus creating detectable noise. Differential Evolution (DE) is an effectual, competent, and robust optimisation method used to solve different problems in the engineering and scientific domains, such as in signal processing. This paper looks

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Publication Date
Thu Sep 15 2022
Journal Name
Knowledge And Information Systems
Multiresolution hierarchical support vector machine for classification of large datasets

Support vector machine (SVM) is a popular supervised learning algorithm based on margin maximization. It has a high training cost and does not scale well to a large number of data points. We propose a multiresolution algorithm MRH-SVM that trains SVM on a hierarchical data aggregation structure, which also serves as a common data input to other learning algorithms. The proposed algorithm learns SVM models using high-level data aggregates and only visits data aggregates at more detailed levels where support vectors reside. In addition to performance improvements, the algorithm has advantages such as the ability to handle data streams and datasets with imbalanced classes. Experimental results show significant performance improvements in compa

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