Objectives: Serratia marcescens is a gram-negative pathogen of many species. The ability of S. marcescens to form biofilms and its potent innate resistance to antimicrobials and cleaning solutions are both essential for its pathogenicity and survival. The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of glyceryl trinitrate (GTN) on the biofilm of S. marcescens, as an alternative for antibiotic therapy. Methods: Different specimens, including ear swabs, burns, mid-stream urine, wound swabs, and sputum, were collected from patients who were brought to Al-Ramadi Hospital, Iraq. All samples were cultured, and the colonies that were obtained were detected using the VITEK® 2 compact. The ability of biofilms to develop was e

Buzurgan oil field suffers from the phenomenon of asphaltene precipitation. The serious negatives of this phenomenon are the decrease in production caused by clogging of the pores and decrease in permeability and wettability of the reservoir rocks, in addition to the blockages that occur in the pipeline transporting crude oil. The presence of laboratories in the Iraqi oil companies helped to conduct the necessary experiments, such as gas chromatography (GC) test to identify the components of crude oil and the percentages of each component, These laboratory results consider the main elements in deriving a new equation called modified colloidal instability index (MCII) equation based on a well-known global equation called colloidal in

The environmental problems that have emerged recently as a result of pressure on the environment due to the increase in population size, especially in urban cities, where this increase was accompanied by the need for housing as well as the need for services and activities. This led to the establishment of many vertical residential buildings represented by residential complexes within the urban fabric of the city of Baghdad. As part of following the methodology of urban dictation policies in empty areas, and to accommodate the largest number of residents as a result of the multiplicity of floors and housing, these buildings must be subject to the standards and requirements of sustainability at the level of their spatial location and their

Objective: To identify barriers to healthcare access, to assess the health literacy levels of the foreign-born Arabic speaking population in Iowa, USA and to measure their prevalence of seeking preventive healthcare services. Methods: A cross-sectional study of native Arabic speaking adults involved a focus group and an anonymous paper-based survey. The focus group and the Andersen Model were used to develop the survey questionnaire. The survey participants were customers at Arabic grocery stores, worshippers at the city mosque and patients at free University Clinic. Chi-square test was used to measure the relationship between the characteristics of survey participants and preventive healthcare services. Thematic analysis was

The application of physiological oxygen (physoxia) concentrations is becoming increasingly commonplace within a mammalian stem cell culture. Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) attract widespread interest for clinical application due to their unique immunomodulatory, multi-lineage potential, and regenerative capacities. Descriptions of the impact of physoxia on global DNA methylation patterns in hMSCs and the activity of enzymatic machinery responsible for its regulation remain limited. Human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BM-hMSCs, passage 1) isolated in reduced oxygen conditions displayed an upregulation of SOX2 in reduced oxygen conditions vs. air oxygen (21% O2, AO), while no change was noted for either OCT-4 or NA

     Community detection is an important and interesting topic for better understanding and analyzing complex network structures. Detecting hidden partitions in complex networks is proven to be an NP-hard problem that may not be accurately resolved using traditional methods. So it is solved using evolutionary computation methods and modeled in the literature as an optimization problem.  In recent years, many researchers have directed their research efforts toward addressing the problem of community structure detection by developing different algorithms and making use of single-objective optimization methods. In this study, we have continued that research line by improving the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm using a

An optoelectronic flow-through detector for active ingredients determination in pharmaceutical formulations is explained. Two consecutive compact photodetector’s devices operating according to light-emitting diodes-solar cells concept where the LEDs acting as a light source and solar cells for measuring the attenuated light of the incident light at 180˚ have been developed. The turbidimetric detector, fabricated of ten light-emitting diodes and five solar cells only, integrated with a glass flow cell has been easily adapted in flow injection analysis manifold system. For active ingredients determination, the developed detector was successfully utilized for the development and validation of an analytical method for warfarin determination

Objective(s): This study aims at determining the effectiveness of an educational program on knowledge of high school students' knowledge about substance abuse and its health consequences, and to find out the association between students’ knowledge about substance abuse and its health consequences and their demographic data of age, socioeconomic status, and educational level of parents.
Methodology: A quasi-experimental study is conducted for the period of October 28th, 2019 to March 30th, 2020. The study sample included a nonprobability “purposive” sample of (124) male students (62) students for the control group and (62) students for the study group, aged (14-19) years who are selected from Al-Hikma High School for Boys in Kirk

Acidizing is one of the most used stimulation techniques in the petroleum industry. Several reports have been issued on the difficulties encountered during the stimulation operation of the Ahdeb oil field, particularly in the development of the Mishrif reservoir, including the following: (1) high injection pressures make it difficult to inject acid into the reservoir formation, and (2) only a few acid jobs have been effective in Ahdeb oil wells, while the bulk of the others has been unsuccessful. The significant failure rate of oil well stimulation in this deposit necessitates more investigations. Thus, we carried out this experimental study to systematically investigate the influence of acid treatment on the geomechanical properties of Mi4