Biotreatment using immobilized cells (IC) technology has proved to be the most promising and most economical approach for the removal of many toxic organic pollutants found in petroleum-refinery wastewater (PRW) such as phenol. This study was undertaken to evaluate the degradation of phenol by Pseudomonas cells individually immobilized in two different bio-carrier matrices including polyvinyl alcohol-guar gum (PVA-GG) and polyvinyl alcohol-agar agar (PVA-AA). Results of batch experiments revealed that complete removal of phenol was attained in the first cycle after 150 min using immobilized cells (IC) in both PVA-GG and PVA-AA. Additional cycles were confirmed to evaluate the validity of recycling beads of immob

In drilling fluid program, selecting the drilling fluid that will reduce the lost time is the first objective, and will be economical regardless of its cost. The amount and type of solids in drilling fluid is the primary control of the rheological and filtration properties. Palygorskite clay (attapulgite) is an active solid that has the ability to reactive with its environment and form a gel structure within a fluid and due to its stability in the presence of brines and electrolytes this type of clay is preferred for use. The aim of this study is to improve properties of Iraqi palygorskite (PAL) by adding different chemical additives such as caustic soda NaOH and soda ash Na₂CO₃ with a different con

Doxorubicin (DOX) is an efficient antineoplastic agent with a broad antitumor spectrum; however, doxorubicin-associated cardiotoxic adverse effect through oxidative damage and apoptosis limits its clinical application. Cafestol (Caf) is a naturally occurring diterpene in unfiltered coffee with unique antioxidant, antimutagenic, and anti-inflammatory activities by activating the Nrf2 pathway. The present study aimed to investigate the potential chemoprotective effect of cafestol on DOX-induced cardiotoxicity in rats. Wistar albino rats of both sexes were administered cafestol (5 mg/kg/day) for 14 consecutive days by oral gavage alone or with doxorubicin which was injected as a single dose (15 mg/kg intraperitoneally at day 14) to i

Rainwater harvesting could be a possible solution to decrease the consequences of water scarcity and energy deficiency in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). This study aims to calculate the water and energy (electricity) saved by rainwater harvesting for rooftops and green areas in Sulaimani city, KR, Iraq. Various data were acquired from different formal entities in Sulaimani city. Moreover, Google Earth and ArcMap 10.4 software were used for digitizing and calculating the total rooftop and green areas. The results showed that for the used runoff coefficients (0.8 and 0.95), the harvested rainwater volumes were 2901563 and 12197131 m³ during the study period (2005 – 2006) and (2019-2020). Moreover, by compa

The paper uses the Direct Synthesis (DS) method for tuning the Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) controller for controlling the DC servo motor. Two algorithms are presented for enhancing the performance of the suggested PID controller. These algorithms are Back-Propagation Neural Network and Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The performance and characteristics of DC servo motor are explained. The simulation results that obtained by using Matlab program show that the steady state error is eliminated with shorter adjusted time when using these algorithms with PID controller. A comparative between the two algorithms are described in this paper to show their effectiveness, which is found that the PSO algorithm gives be

Soil suction is one of the most important parameters describing the moisture condition of unsaturated soils. The measurement of soil suction is crucial for applying the theories of the engineering behavior of unsaturated soils.
The filter paper method is one of the soil suction measurement techniques In this paper, five soil samples were collected from five sites within Baghdad city – al-Rasafa region. These soils have different properties and they were prepared at different degrees of saturation. For each sample, the total and matric suction were measured by the filter paper method at different degrees of saturation. Then correlations were made between the soil properties and the total and matric suction. It was concluded that the

Alzheimer's disease (AD) increasingly affects the elderly and is a major killer of those 65 and over. Different deep-learning methods are used for automatic diagnosis, yet they have some limitations. Deep Learning is one of the modern methods that were used to detect and classify a medical image because of the ability of deep Learning to extract the features of images automatically. However, there are still limitations to using deep learning to accurately classify medical images because extracting the fine edges of medical images is sometimes considered difficult, and some distortion in the images. Therefore, this research aims to develop A Computer-Aided Brain Diagnosis (CABD) system that can tell if a brain scan exhibits indications of

Magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) of iron oxide (Fe₃O₄) represent the most promising materials in many applications. MNPs have been synthesized by co-precipitation of ferric and ferrous ions in alkaline solution. Two methods of synthesis were conducted with different parameters, such as temperature (25 and 80 ̊C), adding a base to the reactants and the opposite process, and using nitrogen as an inert gas. The product of the first method (MNPs-1) and the second method (MNPs-2) were characterized by x-ray diffractometer (XRD), Zeta Potential, atomic force microscope (AFM) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). AFM results showed convergent particle size of (MNPs-1) and (MNPs-2) with (86.01) and (74.14)