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

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

Background: The immune system of the oral cavity suffers alterations due to fixed orthodontic treatment which act as potent stimulus for oral secretory immunity. The aims of this study are to estimate the effect of fixed orthodontic appliance on the level of salivary sIgA at different time intervals, and to verify the gender difference. Materials and method: The patient's history, clinical examination, and fixed orthodontic appliances were placed for 30 Iraqi orthodontic adult patients had class II division 1 and/ or class I malocclusion (15 males and 15 females) aged 18-25 years old. The unstimulated whole saliva was collected from each sample immediately before wearing fixed appliance (control group T0 as base line), and after 2 weeks (T1

The pumping station became widely used in many fields. Free surface vortices at intakes of pumps are not favorable. It may cause noise, excessive vibration, damage to the pumping structure, reduction in efficiency and flow for hydro-turbines, etc. One of the important problems encountered during the pump intake design is the depth of submergence and other design parameters to avoid strong free-surface vortices formation. This study aims to compute the critical submergence depth with some geometrical and hydraulic limitations by using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) package. The mathematical model was validated with a laboratory model that had been conducted. The model of three intake pipes was investigated under five d