A mounted specimen of a mustelid animal deposited in the Kurdistan Museum of Natural History, Salahaddin University, Erbil proved to be Mustela erminea (Linnaeus, 1758) and represents a new record for the mammalian fauna of Iraq. Its measurements and some biological noted are provided. Also, two passerine birds; the Red-headed bunting, Emberiza bruniceps Brandt, 1841(Family, Emberizidae) and the Variable wheatear, Oenanthe picata (Blyth, 1847) (Family, Muscicapidae) were recorded for the first time in Iraq. Furthermore, the tree frog Hyla savignyi Audouin, 1829 was found in two locations north east of Iraq with spotted dorsum and having interesting behavior in having the capability of body inflation and hiding the head downward.
solation of candida spp. From cancer patients who suffered oral candidiasis due to immunodeficiency
Pyrolysis of virgin polyethylene plastics was studied in order to produce hydrocarbon liquid fuel. The pyrolysis process carried out for low and high-density polyethylene plastics in open system batch reactor in temperature range of 370 to 450°C.
Thermo-gravimetric analysis of the virgin plastics showed that the degradation ranges were between 326 and 495 °C. The results showed that the optimum temperature range of pyrolysis of polyethylene plastics that gives highest liquid yield (with specific gravity between 0.7844 and 0.7865) was 390 to 410 °C with reaction time of about 35 minutes. Fourier Transform Infrared spectroscopy gave a quite evidence that the produced hydrocarbon liquid fuel consisted ma
... Show MoreBio-diesel is an attractive fuel fordiesel engines. The feedstock for bio-diesel production is usually vegetable oil, waste cooking oil, or animal fats. This work provides an overview concerning bio-diesel production. Also, this work focuses on the commercial production of biodiesel. The objective is to study the influence of these parameters on the yield of produced. The biodiesel production affecting by many parameters such s alcohol ratio (5%, 10%,15 %, 20%,25%,30%35% vol.), catalyst loading (5,10,15,20,25) g,temperature (45,50,55,60,65,70,75)°C,reaction time (0-6) h, mixing rate (400-1000) rpm. the maximum bio-diesel production yield (95%) was obtained using 20% methanol ratio and 15g biocatalyst at 60°C.
Heavy metal consider as major environmental pollutants. Many of industrial wastewater effluents contain a wide range of these heavy metals. The adsorption of Cd2+ and Pb2+ metal ions from aqueous solution by activated carbon was studied. The results showed that maximum adsorption capacity occurred at 486.9×10-3 mg/kg for Pb2+ ion and 548.8×10-3 mg/kg for Cd2+ ion. The adsorption in a mixture of the metal ions had a balancing effect on the adsorption capacity of the activated carbon. The adsorption capacity of each metal ion was affected by the presence of other metal ions rather than its presence individually. The study showed the presence of other heavy metals attribute to the reduction in the activated carbon capacity, and the adsorp
... Show MoreCopper oxide (CuO) nanoparticles were synthesized through the thermal decomposition of a copper(II) Schiff-base complex. The complex was formed by reacting cupric acetate with a Schiff base in a 2:1 metal-to-ligand ratio. The Schiff base itself was synthesized via the condensation of benzidine and 2-hydroxybenzaldehyde in the presence of glacial acetic acid. This newly synthesized symmetric Schiff base served as the ligand for the Cu(II) metal ion complex. The ligand and its complex were characterized using several spectroscopic methods, including FTIR, UV-vis, 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, CHNS, and AAS, along with TGA, molar conductivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements. The CuO nanoparticles were produced by thermally decomposing the
... Show MoreThe presence of antibiotic residues such as ciprofloxacin (CIPR) in an aqueous environment is dangerous when their concentrations exceed the allowable. Therefore, eliminating these residues from the wastewater becomes an essential issue to prevent their harm. In this work, the potential of efficient adsorption of ciprofloxacin antibiotics was studied using eco-friendly ZSM-5 nanocrystals‑carbon composite (NZC). An inexpensive effective natural binder made of the sucrose-citric acid mixture was used for preparing NZC. The characterization methods revealed the successful preparation of NZC with a favorable surface area of 103.739 m2/g, and unique morphology and functional groups. Investigating the ability of NZC for adsorbing CIPR antibioti
... Show MoreThe effluent quality improvement being discharged from wastewater treatment plants is essential to maintain an environment and healthy water resources. This study was carried out to evaluate the possibility of intermittent slow sand filtration as a promising tertiary treatment method for the sequencing batch reactor (SBR) effluent. Laboratory scale slow sand filter (SSF) of 1.5 UC and 0.1 m/h filtration rate, was used to study the process performance. It was found that SSF IS very efficient in oxidizing organic matter with COD removal efficiency up to 95%, also it is capable of removing considerable amounts of phosphate with 76% and turbidity with 87% removal efficiencies. Slow sand filter efficiently reduced the mass of suspended
... Show MoreNine fish specimens of Thryssa setirostris (Broussonet, 1782) were collected from the Arabian Gulf, during the period from July 2015 to April 2016. Because of the scarcity of this fish and overlapping and ambiguous of its taxonomic characters with other Thryssa spp., a detailed taxonomic study was conducted. The present study includes the most important meristic and morphometric characteristics.
The mean of the total length of the specimens was 149.67 mm; dorsal fin consists of 12 rays, anal fin with 34-37 rays and pectoral fin with 12-13 rays; Gill rakers were 4 upper,1 medial an.10 lower. The most important character that isolates T. setiristis from
... Show MoreThis paper proposes a neuro-fuzzy system to model β-glucosidase activity based on the reaction’s pH level and temperature. The developed fuzzy inference system includes two input variables (pH level and temperature) and one output (enzyme activity). The multi-input fuzzy inference system was developed in two stages: first, developing a single input-single output fuzzy inference system for each input variable (pH, temperature) separately, using the robust adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) approach. The neural network learning techniques were used to tune the membership functions based on previously published experimental data for β-glucosidase. Second, each input’s optimized membership functions from the ANF
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