Many species are resistant to heavy metals in their surrounding polluted environment and Staphylococcus sp. is an example. This study aimed to isolate and characterize bacteria resistant to heavy metals in the Shatt Al-Arab River in southern Basra, Iraq. Based on the morphology and using Vitek II system, and due to their high resistance to heavy metals (mercury and chromium), two species of Staphylococcus (Staphylococcus lentus and Staphylococcus lugdunensis) were chosen and isolated. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the isolates against Hg and Cr was determined after 72 h. of incubation in solid media. All isolates were resistant to Hg (2000 mgL-1) and Cr (4000mgL-1). Living biomass of S. lentus and S. lugdunensis was used to remove the heavy metal ions in various concentrations (5, 10 and 25 mgL-1) of the solutions of aqueous metals. After 72 hours incubation, the removal percentage of S. lugdunensis was 98.91 and 78.78% for Hg and Cr respectively. That for S. lentus it was 77.83% for Cr after 72 hours, and 98.84% for Hg after 24 h. of incubation. The scanning electron microscope approved that the removal of these metals causes morphological changes in bacteria.
Due to their high nutritional value, richness in carbohydrates and good source of protein, legumes are considered essential for human diet. Legumes flours were used as fermentable material for lactic acid production. Hence, previously isolated lactobacilli strains were used in this study. The strains showed strong microbial growth and their survival in glucose-containing MRS medium and were described using a modified Gompertz equation. Lactobacilli exhibited the shortest latency phase in MRS-glucose medium. While the highest lactic acid produced was 15.40g/l by Lpb. pentosus U1 isolate after 48hours. Furthermore, these strains were evaluated in flours samples for acidification capacity. The results showed a decrease
... Show MoreThis paper presents the results of experimental investigations to predict the bearing capacity of square footing on geogrid-reinforced loose sand by performing model tests. The effects of several parameters were studied in order to study the general behavior of improving the soil by using the geogrid. These parameters include the eccentricity value, depth of first layer of reinforcement, and vertical spacing of reinforcement layers. The results of the experimental work indicated that there was an optimum reinforcement embedment depth at which the bearing capacity was the highest when single-layer reinforcement was used. The increase of (z/B) (vertical spacing of reinforcement layer/width of footing) above 1.5 has no effect on the re
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The new sustainable development goals set by the UN include a goal of making cities inclusive, safe, sustainable, and resilient. Cities are growing at huge rates, and conditions of deteriorating QOL̛s are increasing in the form of poor access to services, and slums are remarkable, especially in the cities of the Middle East; hence, the research problem can arise from a lack of knowledge regarding the in determination of a way to assess the resilience of cities to develop mechanisms that will improve the quality of urban life. In this study, a tool called CRF has been applied for the assessment of the city's resilience principles of health and quality of life, economics and social, infrastructure and environmental systems, and the principle
... Show MoreMonthly rainfall data of Baghdad meteorological station were taken to study the time behavior of these data series. Significant fluctuation,very slight increasing trend and significant seasonality were noticed. Several ARIMA models were tested and the best one were checked for the adequacy. It is found that the SEASONAL ARIMA model of the orders SARIMA(2,1,3)x(0,1,1) is the best model where the residual of this model exhibits white noise property, uncorrelateness and they are normally distributed. According to this model, rainfall forecast for four years was also achieved and showing similar trend and extent of the original data.
Abstract
In this study, modified organic solvent (organosolv) method was applied to remove high lignin content in the date palm fronds (type Al-Zahdi) which was taken from the Iraqi gardens. In modified organosolv, lignocellulosic material is fractionated into its constituents (lignin, cellulose and hemicellulose). In this process, solvent (organic)-water is brought into contact with the lignocellulosic biomass at high temperature, using stainless steel reactor (digester). Therefor; most of hemicellulose will remove from the biomass, while the solid residue (mainly cellulose) can be used in various industrial fields. Three variables were studied in this process: temperature, ratio of ethano
... Show MoreCharacteristic evolving is most serious move that deal with image discrimination. It makes the content of images as ideal as possible. Gaussian blur filter used to eliminate noise and add purity to images. Principal component analysis algorithm is a straightforward and active method to evolve feature vector and to minimize the dimensionality of data set, this paper proposed using the Gaussian blur filter to eliminate noise of images and improve the PCA for feature extraction. The traditional PCA result as total average of recall and precision are (93% ,97%) and for the improved PCA average recall and precision are (98% ,100%), this show that the improved PCA is more effective in recall and precision.