Academic chemical laboratories (ACL) are considered public places  the employees come in contact with a variety of pollutants. The aim of the current study was to detect heavy metals levels in the indoor air of ACL in two universities in Baghdad city and assess their levels in the academic employees’ scalp hair as biomarkers. Air samples inside ACL were collected to detect Fe, Cd, Zn, Pb and Cu. Scalp hair samples were collected from 40 adult chemical laboratory employees aged 30-60 years, who worked 5 days/week for 6 hours a day. Personal information relating to employees such as age, duration of exposure, smoking habit and sex, was collected as a questionnaire. The results of this study concluded that academic laboratory employ

Abstract: Aluminum alloys grade 6061-T6 are characterized by their excellent properties and processing characteristics which make them ideal for varieties of industrial applications under cyclic loading, aluminum alloys show less fatigue life than steel alloys of similar strength. In the current study, a nanosecond fiber laser of maximum pulse energy up to 9.9 mJ was used to apply laser shock peening process (LSP) on aluminum thin sheets to introduce residual stresses in order to enhance fatigue life under cyclic loading Box-Behnken design (BBD) based on the design of experiments (DOE) was employed in this study for experimental design data analysis, model building and optimization The effect of working parameters spot size (ω), scannin

Background: Multidrug-resistant (MDR) enterococci have become a major problem in recent times and have been reported increasingly around the world. Lytic phages infect bacteria leading to rapid host death with limited risk of phage transduction, underlining the increasing interest in potential phage therapy in the future. Objective (s): The aim of this study is to use phage therapy as alternative approach for treatment of Enterococcus faecalis infections that recorded as MDR in Iraq to tackle this problem. Materials and Methods: Thirty E. faecalis isolates were collected from patients with different infectious diseases such as urinary tract infection (UTI), diabetic foot, septicemia, and wound infections. The isolation of specific l

In this paper, a miniaturized 2 × 2 electro-optic plasmonic Mach– Zehnder switch (MZS) based on metal–polymer–silicon hybrid waveguide is presented. Adiabatic tapers are designed to couple the light between the plasmonic phase shifter, implemented in each of the MZS arms, and the 3-dB input/output directional couplers. For 6 µm-long hybrid plasmonic waveguide supported by JRD1 polymer (r33= 390 pm/V), a π-phase shift voltage of 2 V is obtained. The switch is designed for 1550 nm operation wavelength using COMSOL software and characterizes by 2.3 dB insertion loss, 9.9 fJ/bit power consumption, and 640 GHz operation bandwidth

Albizia lebbeck biomass was used as an adsorbent material in the present study to remove methyl red dye from an aqueous solution. A central composite rotatable design model was used to predict the dye removal efficiency. The optimization was accomplished under a temperature and mixing control system (37?C) with different particle size of 300 and 600 ?m. Highest adsorption efficiencies were obtained at lower dye concentrations and lower weight of adsorbent. The adsorption time, more than 48 h, was found to have a negative effect on the removal efficiency due to secondary metabolites compounds. However, the adsorption time was found to have a positive effect at high dye concentrations and high adsorbent weight. The colour removal effi

Objective: To compare two positioning approaches in the surgical treatment of unstable intertrochanteric femoral fractures fixed by proximal femoral nailing, the supine versus lateral decubitus position Methodology: This randomized prospective comparative study on 26 patients with unstable intertrochanteric fractures was carried out from January 2020 and June 2022. We randomly divided patients into two groups: group A (13 patients) were operated using the traction table in the supine position for implant insertion, and group B (13 patients) were operated using the lateral decubitus position. We compared both groups regarding the setup time, operative time, tip-to-apex distance, collodiaphyseal angle, time for fluoroscopic time expo

Pots experiment was conducted at the greenhouse of botanical garden belong to Department of Biology, College of Education for Pure Science, Ibn-AL-Haithum, University of Baghdad, for growth season 2018-2019. The aim of the experiment was to study the effects of foliar application of a-tocopherol concentrations (0, 50, 100, 150, 200 mg.L-1) on growth parameters and the activity of some antioxidant enzymes of wheat plant irrigated with sodium chloride concentrations (0, 75, 150, 225) mM.L-1. Salinity reduced plant growth parameter, plant height, flag leaf area, flag leaf chlorophyll content and increased the activity of antioxidant enzymes, superoxide dismutase and peroxidase. Plant growth parameters were enhanced by foliar application of a-t

This paper aims to study the effect of circular Y-shaped fin arrangement to improve the low thermal response rates of a double-tube heat exchanger containing Paraffin phase change material (PCM). ANSYS software is employed to perform the computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulations of the heat exchanger, including fluid flow, heat transfer, and the phase change process. The optimum state of the fin configuration is derived through sensitivity analysis by evaluating the geometrical parameters of the Y-shaped fin. For the same height of the fins (10 mm), the solidification time is reduced by almost 22%, and the discharging rate is enhanced by almost 26% using Y-shaped fins compared with the straight fins. The results demonstrate that the sol

In this work, spinel ferrites (NiCoFe₂O₄) were prepared as thin films by dc reactive dual-magnetron co-sputtering technique. Effects of some operation parameters, such as inter-electrode distance, and preparation conditions such as mixing ratio of argon and oxygen in the gas mixture, on the structural and spectroscopic characteristics of the prepared samples were studied. For samples prepared at inter-electrode distance of 5 cm, only one functional group of OH^- was observed in the FTIR spectra as all bands belonging to the metal-oxygen vibration were observed. Similarly, the XRD results showed that decreasing the pressure of oxygen in the gas mixture lead to grow more crystal planes in the samples prepare