Endophytic fungi live inside plants or any part of them without creating any visible pathogenic signs. Endophytic fungi are found within medicinal plants and have shown strong biologic activity, such as anticancer and antioxidant activities, as well as producing extracellular enzymes. In this study, different fungal strains were isolated from the leaves of the medicinal plant Ziziphus spina, including Aspergillus flavus, Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus niger, Cladosporium sp., Rhizopus sp., and Mucor sp. Extracellular enzymes have been quantified using agar plate-based methods in which fungi were grown in specified growth media to detect the enzymes produced. The results showed that A. niger has the highest ability to produce amy

To accommodate utilities in buildings, different sizes of openings are provided in the web of reinforced concrete deep beams, which cause reductions in the beam strength and stiffness. This paper aims to investigate experimentally and numerically the effectiveness of using carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips, as a strengthening technique, to externally strengthen reinforced concrete continuous deep beams (RCCDBs) with large openings. The experimental work included testing three RCCDBs under five-point bending. A reference specimen was prepared without openings to explore the reductions in strength and stiffness after providing large openings. Openings were created symmetrically at the center of spans of the other specimens

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

Nanofluids, liquid suspensions of nanoparticles (NPs) dispersed in deionized (DI) water, brine, or surfactant micelles, have become a promising solution for many industrial applications including enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and carbon geostorage. At ambient conditions, nanoparticles can effectively alter the wettability of the strongly oil-wet rocks to water-wet. However, the reservoir conditions present the greatest challenge for the success of this application at the field scale. In this work, the performance of anionic surfactant-silica nanoparticle formulation on wettability alteration of oil-wet carbonate surface at reservoir conditions was investigated. A high-pressure temperature vessel was used to apply nano-modification of oil-wet

   Molecular barcoding was widely recognized as a powerful tool for the identification of organisms during the past decade; the aim of this study is to use the molecular approach to identify the diatoms by using the environmental DNA. The diatom specimens were taken from Tigris River. The environmental DNA(e DNA) extraction and analysis of sequences using the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) method showed the highest percentage of epipelic diatom genera including Achnanthidium minutissimum (Kützing) Czarnecki, 1994 (21.1%), Cocconeis placentula Ehrenberg, 1838 (21.3%) and Nitzschia palea (Kützing) W. Smith, 1856 (16.3%).

   Five species of diatoms: Achnanthidiu

Non-prismatic reinforced concrete (RC) beams are widely used for various practical purposes, including enhancing architectural aesthetics and increasing the overall thickness in the support area above the column, which gives high assurance to services that this will not result in the distortion of construction features and can reduce heights. The hollow sections (recess) can also be used for the maintenance of large structural sections and the safe passage of utility lines of water, gas, telecommunications, electricity, etc. They are generally used in large and complex civil engineering works like bridges. This study conducted a numerical study using the commercial finite element software ANSYS version 15 for analysing RC beams, hol

Sensing insole systems are a promising technology for various applications in healthcare and sports. They can provide valuable information about the foot pressure distribution and gait patterns of different individuals. However, designing and implementing such systems poses several challenges, such as sensor selection, calibration, data processing, and interpretation. This paper proposes a sensing insole system that uses force-sensitive resistors (FSRs) to measure the pressure exerted by the foot on different regions of the insole. This system classifies four types of foot deformities: normal, flat, over-pronation, and excessive supination. The classification stage uses the differential values of pressure points as input for a feedforwar