Background: Small cardamom or green cardamom is the dried fruit of the tall perennial herbaceous plant, Elettaria cardamomum Maton belonging to the family Zingiberaceae. The major use of small cardamom on world wide is for domestic culinary purpose and in medicine. This study was conducted to test the effect of small cardamom extracts on Mutans streptococci and Candida Albicans in comparison to 0.2% chlorhexidine gluconate and de-ionized water in vivo. Materials and Methods: Mutans streptococci and Candid Albicans were isolated, purified and diagnosed according to morphological characteristic and biochemical test. In this experiments, the effect of control agents and small cardamom extracts as a mouth rinses was tested on the saliva of group of volunteers to determine the level of Mutans streptococci and Candida Albicans in vivo. Also the salivary flow rate and pH were measured in vivo. Result: 10 % aqueous cardamom extracts had a highly significant antimicrobial activity against mutans streptococci after 15 min after rinsing and following times. 30 % aqueous cardamom extracts had a significant antifungal activity in vivo against Candida albican after 30 min after rinsing and following times. But still CHX is more effective than the other agents in reduction the counts of mutans streptococci and Candida Albicans. CHX 0.2% mouth rinse had the highest stimulation of salivary flow rates and pH followed by hot water cardamom mouth rinse 30% followed by cold cardamom mouth rinse 10% then de-ionized water mouth rinse. Conclusion: Cardamom extracts were effective against Mutans streptococci and Candida Albicans, but still less than CHX.
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
... Show More This paper describes the application of consensus optimization for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) system. Consensus algorithm is usually conducted within a certain number of iterations for a given graph topology. Nevertheless, the best Number of Iterations (NOI) to reach consensus is varied in accordance with any change in number of nodes or other parameters of . graph topology. As a result, a time consuming trial and error procedure will necessary be applied
to obtain best NOI. The implementation of an intellig ent optimization can effectively help to get the optimal NOI. The performance of the consensus algorithm has considerably been improved by the inclusion of Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). As a case s
The pure ZnS and ZnS-Gr nanocomposite have been prepared
successfully by a novel method using chemical co-precipitation. Also
conductive polymer PPy nanotubes and ZnS-PPy nanocomposite
have been synthesized successfully by chemical route. The effect of
graphene on the characterization of ZnS has been investigated. X-ray
diffraction (XRD) study confirmed the formation of cubic and
hexagonal structure of ZnS-Gr. Dc-conductivity proves that ZnS and
ZnS-Gr have semiconductor behavior. The SEM proved that
formation of PPy nanotubes and the Gr nanosheet. The sensing
properties of ZnS-PPy/ZnS-Gr for NO2 gas was investigated as a
function of operating temperature and time under optimal condition.
The sensitivity,
A new application of a combined solvent extraction and two-phase biodegradation processes using two-liquid phase partitioning bioreactor (TLPPB) technique was proposed and developed to enhance the cleanup of high concentration of crude oil from aqueous phase using acclimated mixed culture in an anaerobic environment. Silicone oil was used as the organic extractive phase for being a water-immiscible, biocompatible and non-biodegradable. Acclimation, cell growth of mixed cultures, and biodegradation of crude oil in aqueous samples were experimentally studied at 30±2ºC. Anaerobic biodegradation of crude oil was examined at four different initial concentrations of crude oil including 500, 1000, 2000, and 5000 mg/L. Complete removal of crud
... Show MoreIn this study, nano TiO2 was prepared with titanium isopropoxide (TTIP) as a resource to titanium oxide. The catalyst was synthesized using phosphotungstic acid (PTA) and, stearyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (STAB) was used as the structure-directing material. Characterization of the product was done by the X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescent spectroscopy (XRF), nitrogen adsorption/desorption measurements, Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectra, were used to characterize the calcined TiO2 nanoparticles by STAB and PWA. The TiO2 nanomaterials were prepared in three crystalline forms (amorphous, anatase, anatase-rutile). The results showed that the
... Show MoreThe degradation performance of aqueous solution of pesticide Alachlor has been studied at solar pilot scale plant in two photocatalytic systems: homogeneous photocatalysis by photo-Fenton and heterogeneous photocatalysis with titanium dioxide. The pilot scale system included of compound parabolic collectors specially designed for solar photocatalytic applications, and installed at University of Baghdad, Department of Environmental Engineering back yard. The influence of different concentrations, H2O2 (200-2400 mg/l), Fe+2(5- 30 mg/l) and TiO2 (100-500 mg/l) and their relationship with the degradation efficiency were studied.
The COD removal efficienc
... Show MoreTo decrease the dependency of producing high octane number gasoline on the catalytic processes in petroleum refineries and to increase the gasoline pool, the effect of adding a suggested formula of composite blending octane number enhancer to motor gasoline composed of a mixture of oxygenated materials (ethanol and ether) and aromatic materials (toluene and xylene) was investigated by design of experiments made by Mini Tab 15 statistical software. The original gasoline before addition of the octane number blending enhancer has a value of (79) research octane number (RON). The design of experiments which study the optimum volumetric percentages of the four variables, ethanol, toluene, and ether and xylene materials leads
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