Studies were conducted to screen eight sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.) genotypes for their allelopathic potential against weeds and wheat crop, which customarily follows sunflower in Iraq. All sunflower genotypes significantly inhibited the total number and biomass of companion weeds and the magnitude of inhibition was genotype dependent. Among the eight genotypes tested, Sin-Altheeb and Coupon were the most weed-suppressing cultivars, and Euroflor and Shumoos were the least. A subsequent field experiment indicated that sunflower residues incorporated into the field soil significantly inhibited the total number and biomass of weeds growing in the wheat field. Sunflower genotypes Sin-Altheeb and Coupon appeared to inhibit total weed number

The influence of the reaction gas composition during the DC magnetron sputtering process on the structural, chemical and optical properties of Ce-oxide thin films was investigated. X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies confirmed that all thin films exhibited a polycrystalline character with cubic fluorite structure for cerium dioxide. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses revealed that cerium is present in two oxidation states, namely as CeO2 and Ce2O3, at the surface of the films prepared at oxygen/argon flow ratios between 0% and 7%, whereas the films are completely oxidized into CeO2 as the aforementioned ratio increases beyond 14%. Various optical parameters for the thin films (including an optical band gap in the range of 2.25–3.

Parkinson’s disease (PD) consider as a progressive ageing neurodegenerative disease, Parkinson’s consider as a heterogenous disease, with mainly initiate through correlation between genetic and epigenetic by inducing of different factors on some related genes, these factors like (environmental, toxicants, nutrition, heavy metals, pesticides, some drugs) and also(trauma on head ,strokes) in addition to unknown reasons which cause an idiopathic PD .Current study aims to focusing on specific related PD gene called SNCA by single nucleotides polymorphism (rs2619363) as a risk factor for PD initiation disease in PD patients in addition to study the effect of polymorphisms on random Iraqi patients with different gastrointestinal

A tunable band pass filter based on fiber Bragg grating sensor using an in-fiber Mach-Zender interferometer with dual micro-cavities is presented. The micro-cavity was formed by splicing together a conventional single-mode fiber and a solid core photonic crystal fiber (SCPCF) with simple arc discharge technique. Different parameters such as arc power, length of the SCPCF and the overlap gap between samples were considered to control the fabrication process. The ellipsoidal air-cavity between the two fibers forms Fabry-Perot cavity. The diffraction loss was very low due to short cavity length. Ellipsoidal shape micro-cavities were experimentally achieved parallel to the propagation axis having dimensions of (24.92 – 62.32) μm of width

Polycrystalline Cadmium Oxide (CdO) thin films were prepared using pulsed laser deposition onto glass substrates at room temperature with different thicknesses of (300, 350 and 400)nm, these films were irradiated with cesium-137(Cs-137) radiation. The thickness and irradiation effects on structural and optical properties were studied. It is observed by XRD results that films are polycrystalline before and after irradiation, with cubic structure and show preferential growth along (111) and (200) directions. The crystallite sizes increases with increasing of thickness, and decreases with gamma radiation, which are found to be within the range (23.84-4.52) nm and (41.44-4.974)nm before and after irradiation for thickness 350nm and 4

Background: Alternative natural therapy by plants extracts had opened  wide  door   for   the    use  of  natural products as an alternative therapy instead of many antibiotics and drugs , which had many harmful side effects.Also, an increased interest has been centered on the industrial wastes, especially plant raw materials which contain phenols (e.g. Pomegranate peel and Bay leaves) which is a sources of natural antioxidants ,which are on the contrary  of  synthetic  antioxidants that  had restrict use  due to  their  health  risks , carcinogenesis and toxicity .

Objectives :This study was done to fi

In this paper, thermal performance of a zig-zig solar air heater (ZZSAH) with and without using steel wire mesh on the absorber plate of the collector is experimentally investigated. The experimental work includes four inclination angles of the collector 20^o, 30^o, 45^o, and 60^o and four air mass flow rates of 0.03, 0.04, 0.06, and 0.08 kg/s under varieties of operating conditions of a geographic location of  Baghdad. New correlation equations of Nusselt number are obtained from experimental results for both types of collectors where the effect of varying of the inclination angle of collector taken into consideration in the experiment. The correlations show good agreement wi

Exploring the antibacterial potential of neem oil (Azadirachta indica) in combination with gentamicin (GEN) against pathogenic molds, especially Pseudomonas aeruginosa, has drawn concern due to the quest for natural treatment options against incurable diseases. Prospective research directions include looking for natural cures for many of the currently incurable diseases available now. microbial identification system, were used to identify the isolates. The research utilized a range of methods, such as the diffusion agar well (AWD) assays, TEM (transmission electron microscopy) analysis, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) assays, and real-time PCR (RT-qPCR) to analyze bacterial expression and the antibacterial action of neem oil (Azadira

Effect of nano and micro SiO2 particles with different weight percent (2,4,6,8 and 10) %wt on the Interlaminar fracture toughness (GIc) of 16-plies of woven roving glass fiber /epoxy composites prepared by hand lay – up technique were investigated. The specimens were tested using DCB test (mode I).
Area method was used to compute the interlaminar fracture toughness. The results show that, GIc would increase with the increasing in the filler content, the main failure in microcomposites and nanocomposites was delamination in the layers, the delamination reduced with increasing in the filler content.