One hundred and seventy-six cases of suspected meningitis (SMN) were included in a cross-sectional study. Their ages ranged from less than 1 year to 80 years, of whom 44.3% were male. The aim was to assess bacterial meningitis (BMN) in terms of incidence and types of causative bacteria. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) specimens were collected and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) analysis was conducted with universal primers designed to amplify a DNA fragment (996 bp) of the 16S rRNA gene of eubacteria. Resolving PCR products in agarose-gel electrophoresis revealed that 37.5% of CSF specimens were PCR positive, while 62.5% of CSF specimens showed no band and were considered PCR-negative. Eighty percent of the latter specimens were not

This study was conducted to investigate the antibacterial activity of green synthesized copper oxide nanoparticles (CuO NPs) using Aloe vera. Initially, bacteria were collected from clinical samples of patients having otitis media infection and the isolates were identified at the species level following biochemical tests. Copper oxide nanoparticles were prepared by green synthesis using Aloe vera leaves and characterized using UV- visible spectroscopy at 260 nm peak. The shape and size were determined by using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and the dimensions of the particles were more precisely determined by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD). Different concentrations of nanopa

Nanofluids (dispersion of nanoparticles in a base fluid) have been suggested as promising agents in subsurface industries including enhanced oil recovery. Nanoparticles can easily pass through small pore throats in reservoirs formations; however, physicochemical interactions between nanoparticles and between nanoparticles and rocks can cause a significant retention of nanoparticles. This study investigated the transport, attach, and retention of silica nanoparticles in core plugs. The hydrophilic silica nanoparticles were injected into limestone core as nanofluid of different nanoparticles size (5 nm, and 20 nm), concentration (0.005 – 0.1 wt% SiO2), and base fluid salinity (0 – 3 wt% NaCl) at different temperatures (23, and 50 °C). D

Polyphenol oxidase (PPO) is an enzyme containing copper, presents in various fruits and vegetables. It is responsible for the browning reactions when the cells are damaged during handling. The best conditions for extraction of polyphenol oxidase from banana peel was by using an extraction buffer containing phosphate buffer (0.05 M, pH 7), 0.01 M ascorbic acid and 0.5% polyethylene glycol, with extraction ratio 1:4 (w:v) for one minute by using blender. The enzyme activity was measured spectrophotometrically at 425 nm. PPO was studied to prevent the browning of banana peel which results in the loss of their marketability. The aim of this study was to determine the optimum conditions for polyphenol oxidase extraction from banana peel.

The analysis of COVID-19 data in Iraq is carried out. Data includes daily cases and deaths since the outbreak of the pandemic in Iraq on February 2020 until the 28th of June 2022. This is done by fitting some distributions to the data in order to find out the most appropriate distribution fit to both daily cases and deaths due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The statistical analysis includes estimation of the parameters, the goodness of fit tests and illustrative probability plots. It was found that the generalized extreme value and the generalized Pareto distributions may provide a good fit for the data for both daily cases and deaths. However, they were rejected by the goodness of fit test statistics due to the high variability of the data.<

Human action recognition has gained popularity because of its wide applicability, such as in patient monitoring systems, surveillance systems, and a wide diversity of systems that contain interactions between people and electrical devices, including human computer interfaces. The proposed method includes sequential stages of object segmentation, feature extraction, action detection and then action recognition. Effective results of human actions using different features of unconstrained videos was a challenging task due to camera motion, cluttered background, occlusions, complexity of human movements, and variety of same actions performed by distinct subjects. Thus, the proposed method overcomes such problems by using the fusion of featur

The aim of the present investigation was to develop a microsponge delivery system of acyclovir to control its release when applied topically thereby reducing dosing frequency and enhancement patient compliance. The microsponges were produced by the oil in oil emulsion solvent diffusion method. The effect of different formulation and process variables such as internal phase volume, polymer type, drug-polymer ratio, stirring speed and stirring duration on microsponge production yield, loading efficiency, particle size and in-vitro drug release was evaluated. The result showed that the microsponge F2 prepared from Eudrajet RS polymer had optimum physical properties regarding the loading efficiency of 99.71_+ 0.7% and product