Sepsis is a major cause of death worldwide among hospitalized patients, however, an accurate and advanced identification method is associated with improved sepsis patient survival. This Retrospective study carried out in Sulaimani pediatric teaching hospital from January 2014 to July 2015 and aimed to compare the effectiveness of VITEK 2 system with traditional manual procedures for identification of pathogenic bacteria in patients with a serious disease like sepsis. The positive blood cultures were divided into two groups; 138 positive cultures identified by conventional manual methods and 104 positive cultures identified by automated VITEK 2 system. The results showed that VITEK 2 system identified 16 genera and 30 species whereas only nine genera with seven species diagnosed by using routine method. The most important result during this study was the identification of five uncommon bacterial genera Kocuria, Leuconostic, Cedecea, Pantoea and Burkhoderia which have never been diagnosed in the microbiology laboratory of the hospital until the modern automated system VITEK 2 use. In conclusion, using VITEK 2 is required to enhance the performance of hospital’s microbiology laboratory which is essential for accurate diagnosis and prompt effective treatment of blood stream infections.
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This work involved the co-substitution of the two bioactive ions of strontium and magnesium into the hydroxyapatite (HA) coating which was then electrochemically deposited on Ti-6Al-4V ELI dental alloy (Gr.23) before and after treatment by Micro Arc Oxidation (MAO). The deposited layers were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). The adhesion strength of the coating layer was estimated by using pull-off adhesion test. The adhesion strength of Sr/Mg-HA on the Ti-6Al-4V ELI dental alloy after MAO treatment was 1.79 MPa, which was higher than that before MAO treatment (1.62 MPa). The corrosion behavior of th
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Density Functional Theory (DFT) method of the type (B3LYP) and a Gaussian basis set (6-311G) were applied for calculating the vibration frequencies and absorption intensities for normal coordinates (3N-6) at the equilibrium geometry of the Di and Tetra-rings layer (6, 0) zigzag single wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) by using Gaussian-09 program. Both were found to have the same symmetry of D6d point group with C--C bond alternation in all tube rings (for axial bonds, which are the vertical C--Ca bonds in rings layer and for circumferential bonds C—Cc in the outer and mid rings bonds). Assignments of the modes of vibration IR active and inactive vibration frequ
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In this study, iron was coupled with copper to form a bimetallic compound through a biosynthetic method, which was then used as a catalyst in the Fenton-like processes for removing direct Blue 15 dye (DB15) from aqueous solution. Characterization techniques were applied on the resultant nanoparticles such as SEM, BET, EDAX, FT-IR, XRD, and zeta potential. Specifically, the rounded and shaped as spherical nanoparticles were found for green synthesized iron/copper nanoparticles (G-Fe/Cu NPs) with the size ranging from 32-59 nm, and the surface area was 4.452 m2/g. The effect of different experimental factors was studied in both batch and continuous experiments. These factors were H2O2 concentration, G-Fe/CuNPs amount, pH, initial DB15
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A case–control study (80 patients with chronic hepatitis B virus [HBV] infection and 96 controls) was performed to evaluate the association of an IL12A gene variant (rs582537 A/C/G) with HBV infection. Allele G showed a signifcantly lower frequency in patients compared to controls (31.2 vs. 46.9%; probability [p]=0.009; corrected p [pc]=0.027) and was associated with a lower risk of HBV infection (odds ratio [OR]=0.49; 95% confdence interval [CI]=0.29–0.83). A similar lower risk was associated with genotypes CG (17.5 vs. 29.2; OR=0.25; 95% CI=0.08–0.81; p=0.02) and GG (10.0 vs. 16.7; OR=0.25; 95% CI=0.07–0.91; p=0.036), but the pc value was not signifcant (0.12 and 0.126, respec‑ tively). Serum IL35 levels showed signifcant difere
... Show MoreOptical fiber biomedical sensor based on surface plasmon resonance for measuring and sensing the concentration and the refractive index of sugar in blood serum is designed and implemented during this work. Performance properties such as signal to noise ratio (SNR), sensitivity, resolution and the figure of merit were evaluated for the fabricated sensor. It was found that the sensitivity of the optical fiber-based SPR sensor with 40 nm thick and 10 mm long Au metal film of the exposed sensing region is 7.5µm/RIU, SNR is 0.697, figure of merit is 87.2 and resolution is 0.00026. The sort of optical fiber utilized in this work is plastic optical fiber with a core diameter of 980 µm, a cladding of 20μm, and a numerical aperture of 0.
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The present work focuses on the experimental implementation of one of the fiber optical sensors, the optical glass fiber built on surface Plasmon resonance. A type of optical glass fiber was used in this work, single-mode no-core fiber with pre-tapering diameter: (125.1 μm) and (125.3 μm), respectively. The taper method can be tested by measuring the output power of the optical fiber before and after chemical etching to show the difference in cladding diameter due to the effect of hydrofluoric acid with increasing time for the taper process. The optical glass fiber sensor can be fabricated using the taper method to reduce the cladding diameter of the fibers to (83.12 µm, 64.37 µm, and 52.45 µm) for single-mode fibers using Hydrofluoric
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