Crab shells were used to produce chitosan via the three stages of deproteinization, demineralization and deacetylation using sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid under different treatment conditions of temperature and time. The produced chitosan was characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIRS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), high – resolution scanning electron microscopy (HRSEM), electron dispersion spectroscopy (EDS), dynamic light scattering (DLS), Brunauer Emmett Teller (BET) and Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The adsorption behavior of chitosan to remove arsenic (As) and copper (Cu) from electroplating wastewater was examined by batch adsorption process as a function of adsorbent dose, contact time and temperature. The FTIR, XRD, HRSEM and EDS analyses confirmed, respectively, the presence of –NH2 and –OH functional groups, with amorphous/crystalline phases, crystallinity index of 69.54%, needle-like morphology and Carbon (C), Oxygen (O) and Nitrogen N) in the produced chitosan. While DLS, BET and TGA showed, respectively, that the produced chitosan has an average particle size of 729nm, is moderately polydisperse, has12.67 m2/g surface area, mesoporous in nature, and with thermal stability of up to 1430C. The optimum adsorbent dose, contact time and temperature values to remove As and Cu by chitosan were 15mg, 45 minutes, 333K and25mg, 60 minutes, 349K,respectively. Under the employed conditions, chitosan though has a low surface area, displaying high adsorption capacity for both metal ions. The adsorption isotherm data were better fitted to the Jovanovic isotherm model while the kinetic data fitted best to the pseudo-second order model. The thermodynamic studies established that the adsorption was feasible but endothermic in nature. This study shows that chitosan adsorbents purify electroplating wastewater.
Background: A diverse group of bacteria live in biofilms in the oral cavity. On dental surfaces biofilms form plaque that is potentially involved in caries and periodontal diseases. Periodic studying of plaque microflora and their antimicrobial sensitivity patterns strongly affects the clinical practice in plaque-induced oral diseases. Materials and methods: Dental plaque samples were collected from 22 patients having ages ranged between 33 and 49 years with gingivitis that met the study criteria. Plaque, gingival and gingival bleeding indices (PI, GI, GBI) were measured for each patient. Laboratory procedures included microbiological examination of plaque samples followed by antibiotic sensitivity testing using disc diffusion method were
... Show MoreUrinary tract infections (UTI) caused by methicillin resistant staphylococci are a
growing problem for many health care institutions especially when it correlates with
biofilms formation of these isolates on living and nonliving surfaces. The prevalence
of staphylococci from UTI were studied and it was found that S.epidermidis are
higher prevalence than S.aureus 55.5% ( 10 out of 18) and 26.6% ( 8 out of 30) were
methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus isolates (MRSA) and methicillin resistant
staphylococcus epidermidis (MRSE), respectively. Biofilm formation on microtiter
plates revealed that MRSE isolates was more efficient in biofilm production than its
counterpart MRSA.
The research aims to apply the novel forward osmosis (FO) process to recover pure water
from contaminated water. Phenol was used as organic substance in the feed solution, while sodium
chloride salt was used as draw solution. Membranes used in the FO process is the cellulose
triacetate (CTA) and polyamide (thin film composite (TFC)) membrane. Reverse osmosis process
was used to treatment the draw solution, the exterior from the forward osmosis process. In the FO
process the active layer of the membrane faces the feed solution and the porous support layer faces
the draw solution and this will show the effect of dilutive internal concentration polarization and
concentrative external concentration polarization.
In th
As major nosocomial pathogens,
In this study, 20
A total of 13 samples of domestic cat Felis cattus (Linnaeus, 1758 ) and 9 samples of wild cat Felis chaus furax (de Winton, 1898) of the Felidae Family were trapped and examined to detect the hard ticks. The areas of the collection were: Baghdad, Al-Rashidiya, Tharthar, Nahrawan, AL-Mahmoudiya (middle of Iraq) and AL-Haretha (south of Iraq), Mosul (north of Iraq). The results of the current study revealed that four species belong to two genera of hard ticks: Haemaphysalis sp. (Koch, 1844), Rhipicephalus turanicus (Morel, 1969), Rhipicephalus sanguineus (Neumann, 1904) and Rhipicephalus appendiculatus (Santos, 1955). The rates and the density of infestation were discussed. The current study aimed to clarify the infestation differe
... Show MoreSalmonellosis in poultry is one of the most significant bacterial infections causing mortality, reduced production, and serious economic losses. This study aimed to study the molecular diversity among Salmonella isolates and investigate the epidemiological spread of these bacteria in broiler and layer chicken flocks in five different farms in Karbala, Iraq, using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) polymerase chain reaction (PCR). In total, 217 cloac a swabs were collected from the farms, out of which 129 and 88 swabs were taken from broiler and layer chickens. The samples were screened by PCR for S. enterica subsp. enterica using primers specific for the invA gene. Afterward, RAPD-PCR with uniplex or multiplex octamer primers was appli
... Show MoreBacterial strains were isolated from oil-contaminated soil, in 2018, these isolates were identified, and with the aim of finding out the ability of these isolates to degrede the oil compounds, the color change of medium which added to it isolates was read by the method of Pacto Bushnell Hans. Then the change in the petroleum compounds was read by gas chromatography, for the most effective isolates.
The nine isolated bacterial showed different degrees of color change, and the isolates (Pseudomonas, Bacillus, Micrococcus) outperformed the color change amount (78, 78, 77) %, respectively, compared to the control, and the three isolates together showed the best color change of 90.7. % Compared to the control, and the
... Show MoreA total of sixty raw milk samples were collected from (street vendors and shops) from Baghdad city, Iraq. The samples were inoculated into peptone water and, then, subcultured onto MacConkey agar and Blood agar. Identification of isolates was confirmed by microscopic examination, cultural characteristic, biochemical tests, Vitek (VITEK®2 system), and Biolog GN substrate reactions followed by 16S rRNA and specific genes sequencing. Of 60 raw cow’s milk samples, Providencia spp. were identified only in 4 samples (6.67%) and P. rettgeri was the most common, 2/4 (50%), followed by P. stuartii and P. vermicola, 1/4 (25%). Antimicrobial susceptibility tests were conducted against ten antibiotics by the disc diffusion method. All Provid
... Show MoreOne of the challenging and active research topics in the recent years is Facial Expression. This paper presents the method to extract the features from the facial expressions from still images. Feature extraction is very important for classification and recognition process. This paper involve three stages which contain capture the images, pre-processing and feature extractions. This method is very efficient in feature extraction by applying haar wavelet and Karhunen-Loève Transform (KL-T). The database used in this research is from Cohen-Kanade which used six expressions of anger, sadness fear, happiness, disgust and surprise. Features that have been extracted from the image of facial expressions were used as inputs to the neural networ
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