MRSA is one of the major pathogens in hospitals and the community, which have the ability to produce biofilm as a virulence factor, the impact of chalcone on biofilm formation, the synergism effect of chalcone and antibiotic in both in vitro and in vivo experiments, the gene expression of virulence genes (srtA, fnbA, fnbB) before and after treatment of it on MRSA biofilm cells in vitro, all these were the prime aims of this study. Chalcone at MBIC (20 μg/ml), significantly reduced the biofilm formation to 21.45% and at sub MBIC (15 μg/ml) to 36.58 %. While, Chalcone at MIC(5 μg/ml) reduced MRSA planktonic cells to 49.61%. Susceptibility of MRSA isolates against eight antibiotics showed that all isolates were sensitive to vancomycin and none of the isolates developed susceptibility to erythromycin. The combinatorial effect of chalcone at 5 μg/ml and vancomycin at MIC of (1 μg/ml) on MRSA planktonic cells was reduced it from 70 to 23.3% , and in combination with erythromycin at 32 μg/ml, was decreased from 53.1% to 22% and the effect of chalcone at sub MBIC (15 μg/ml) when combined with vancomycin was reducing the biofilm formation from 87% to 27.6 and with erythromycin from 55.1% to 23.8%. Combinatorial phenotypic effect of the antibiotics and chalcone (at sub MBIC), in vitro came in line with the result of in vivo experiment and the results showed decrease in the expression of fnbA, fnbB and srtA genes in tested isolates in the presence of chalcone at sub MBIC. In our study, we demonstrated that chalcone exhibited significant effect in biofilm formation of MRSA strains, which can be considered as promising antimicrobial agents that can be used for prevention of MRSA adherence or as adjunct to antibiotics in conventional therapy.
The hydatid materials were collected and studied, so they were contained 50 fertile human hydatid cases {33 (66%) females and 17 (34%) males}. They were collected from Al-Ramadi General Hospital during the period from December, 2003 to July, 2004 .Cysts were observed in 40 (80%) from the liver, 5 (10%) from the lungs, 3 (6%) from the kidney and 2 (4%) cysts from urinary bladder. The specimens were taken from patients of different ages. The in vitro viability of protoscoleces was assessed on the basis of flame cell activity and eosein exclusion, which were considered as criteria to determine the death or viability of protoscoleces. In addition to this movement (flame cell activity), another motility like constriction – relaxatio
... Show MoreIn this paper, the Reliability Analysis with utilizing a Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) process was conducted on the equation of the collapse potential predicted by ANN to study its reliability when utilized in a situation of soil that has uncertainty in its properties. The prediction equation utilized in this study was developed previously by the authors. The probabilities of failure were then plotted against a range of uncertainties expressed in terms of coefficient of variation. As a result of reliability analysis, it was found that the collapse potential equation showed a high degree of reliability in case of uncertainty in gypseous sandy soil properties within the specified coefficient of variation (COV) for each property. When t
... Show MoreIn this paper, two types of iron oxide nanomaterial (Fe3O4) and nanocomposite (T-Fe3O4) were created from the bio-waste mass of tangerine peel. These two materials were utilized for adsorption tests to remove cefixime (CFX) from an aqueous solution. Before the adsorption application, both adsorbents have been characterized by various characterizations such as XRD, FTIR, VSM, TEM, and FESEM. The mesoporous nano-crystalline structure of Fe3O4 and T-Fe3O4 nanocomposite with less than 100-nm diameter is confirmed. The adsorption of the obtained adsorbents was evaluated for CFX removal by adjusting several operation parameters to optimize the removal. The optimal conditions for CFX removal were found to be an initial concentration of 40 and 50 m
... Show MoreThin films of ZnSxSe1-x with different sulfide content(x)
(0, 0.02, 0.04, 0.06, 0.8, and 0.1), thickness (t) (0.3, 0.5, and 0.7 μm) and annealing temperature (Ta) (R.T 373 and 423K) were fabricated by thermal evaporating under vacuum of 10-5 Toor on glass substrate. The results show that the increasing of sulfide content (x)and annealing temperature lead to decrease the d.c conductivity σDC of and concentration of charge carriers (nH) but increases the activation energy (Ea1,Ea2), while the increasing of t increases σDC and nH but decrease (Ea1,Ea2). The results were explained in different terms
The reuse or recycling of waste materials in different aspects of life is served the objective of sustainability and be beneficial to society. In recent years, a wide variety of waste materials were used in pavement construction. One of these materials is glass that generally produces in large quantities and crushed glass can be considered feasible alternative source of aggregate for asphalt mixture production. This study focused on examining the asphalt mixture properties of wearing course using crushed glass as fine aggregates. Fine crushed glass with various percentages by total weight retained on sieve 2.36 mm, 0.3 mm and 0.075 mm was used in the study. The results indicate that mixes containing crushed glass had lower Marshall stabilit
... Show MoreIn this study, geopolymer mortar was designed in various experimental combinations employing 1% micro steel fibers and was subjected to different temperatures, according to the prior works of other researchers. The geopolymer mortar was developed using a variety of sustainable material proportions (fly ash and slag) to examine the influence of fibers on its strength. The fly ash weight percentage was 50%, 60%, and 70% by slag weight to study its effect on the geopolymer mortar's properties. The optimal ratio produced the most significant results when mixed at a 50:50 ratio of fly ash and slag with 1% micro steel fibers at curing temperature 240oC for 4 hours through two days. The compressive strength of the geopolymer mortar increas
... Show MoreThe present study reports the effect of temperature and liquid hourly space velocity (LHSV) on the cumene cracking reaction rate and selectivity by using a laboratory continuous flow unit with fixed bed reactor operating at atmospheric pressure. The prepared HX zeolite was made from Iraqi kaolin with good crystallinity .The activity and selectivity of prepared HX-zeolite was compared with standard HY zeolite and HX zeolite catalysts in the temperature range of 673-823K and LHSV of 0.7-2.5 h-1 . It was found that the cumene conversion increases with increasing temperature and decreasing LHSV at 823K and LHSV of 0.7 h-1 the conversions 65.32, 42.88 and 59.42 mol% for HY, HX and prepared HX catalysts respectively and at LHSV of 2.5 h-1 and th
... Show MoreThin films of the blended solution of (NiPc/C60) on glass substrates were prepared by spin-coated method for three different ratios (100/1, 100/10 and 100/100). The effects of annealing temperature and C60 concentration on the optical properties of the samples were studied using the UV-Vis absorption spectroscopy and FTIR spectra. The optical absorption spectrum consists of two main bands, Q and B band, with maxima at about (602-632) nm and (700-730) nm for Q1 and Q2 respectively, and (340-375) nm for B band. The optical energy gap were determined from optical absorption spectra, The variation of optical energy gap with annealing temperature was nonsystematic and this may be due to the improvement in crystal structure for thin films. Whi
... Show MoreThe nonlinear optical properties for polymeric (PMMA) doping with dye Rhodmine (R3Go) has been studied .The samples are prepared by normal polymerization method with concentrations of 5x10-5mol/l and a thickness of 272.5µm.
Plasma effect was studied on samples prepared before and after exposure to the Nd: YAG laser for three times 5, 10 and 15 minutes. Z-Scan technique is used to determine the nonlinear optical properties such as; refractive index (n2) and the coefficient of nonlinear absorption (β). It was found that the nonlinear properties is change by increasi
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