Objectives: Serratia marcescens is a gram-negative pathogen of many species. The ability of S. marcescens to form biofilms and its potent innate resistance to antimicrobials and cleaning solutions are both essential for its pathogenicity and survival. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) on the biofilm of S. marcescens, as an alternative for antibiotic therapy. Methods: Different specimens, including ear swabs, burns, mid-stream urine, wound swabs, and sputum, were collected from patients who were brought to Al-Ramadi Hospital, Iraq. All samples were cultured, and the colonies that were obtained were detected using the VITEK® 2 compact. The ability of biofilms to develop was e

The introduction of concrete damage plasticity material models has significantly improved the accuracy with which the concrete structural elements can be predicted in terms of their structural response. Research into this method's accuracy in analyzing complex concrete forms has been limited. A damage model combined with a plasticity model, based on continuum damage mechanics, is recommended for effectively predicting and simulating concrete behaviour. The damage parameters, such as compressive and tensile damages, can be defined to simulate concrete behavior in a damaged-plasticity model accurately. This research aims to propose an analytical model for assessing concrete compressive damage based on stiffness deterioration. The prop

One of the most essential components of asphalt pavements is the filler. It serves two purposes. First, this fine-grained material (diameter less than 0.075 mm) improves the cohesiveness of aggregate with bitumen. Second, produce a dense mixture by filling the voids between the particles. Aluminum dross (AD), which is a by-product of aluminum re-melting, is formed all over the world. This material causes damage to humans and the environment; stockpiling AD in landfills is not the best solution. This research studies the possibility of replacing part of the conventional filler with aluminum dross. Three percent of dross was used, 10, 20, and 30% by filler weight. The MarshallMix design method was adopted to obtain the op

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, progressive, inflammatory autoimmune disease of unidentified etiology, associated with articular, extra-articular and systemic manifestation that require long-standing treatment. Taking patient’s beliefs about the prescribed medication in consideration had been shown to be an essential factor that affects adherence of the patient in whom having positive beliefs is an essential for better adherence. The purpose of the current study was to measure beliefs about medicines among a sample of Iraqi patients with Rheumatoid arthritis and to determine possible association between this belief and some patient-certain factors. This study is a cross-sectional study carried out on 250 already diagnosed rheumatoid

Understanding, promoting, and teaching media literacy is an important societal challenge. STEM educators are increasingly looking to incorporate 21st century skills such as media literacy into core subject education. In this paper we investigate how undergraduate Computer Science (CS) students can learn media literacy as a by-product of collaborative video tutorial production. The paper presents a study of 34 third-year CS undergraduates who, as part of their learning, were each asked to produce three video tutorials on Raspberry Pi programming, using a collaborative video production tool for mobile phones (Bootlegger). We provide results of both quantitative and qualitative analysis of the production process and resulting video tutorials,