The current study focuses on the bacterium Acinetobacter baumannii due to its importance as a nosocomial infections source in addition to its increased resistance against antibiotics. Different clinical and hospital environment samples were collected, and cultured on A. baumannii selective media: Leed Acinetobacter agar and Herellea agar. A. baumannii have been identified by traditional methods, followed by confirmation using molecular identification to detect blaoxa-51 like gene which is considered a diagnostic gene since it is present in genome of all A. baumannii strains. The result was, nineteen bacterial isolates of A.baumannii were obtained, from twenty-seven suspected isolate
... Show MoreLanguage and politics go hand in hand and learning and comprehending political genre is to learn a language created for codifying, extending and transmitting political discourse in any text/talk. Drawing upon the theoretical framework of Fairclough’s CDA and Rhetoric, the current study aims at investigating Donald Trump’s First Speech, from the point of frequency and functions of some rhetorical strategies (Parallelism, Anaphora and the Power of Three, Antithesis and Expletive, etc.), Nominalization, Passivization, We-groups and Modality as well as Lexical and Textual Analysis, presented to the UN delivered on Sep. 19, 2017. Specifically, the study seeks to determine: (1) how President Trump succeeded in conveying his notions an
... Show MoreThis study aims at identifying the reality of alternative assessment for teachers of the first cycle of the basic education in the Sultanate of Oman with respect to the degree of teachers' use of alternative assessment strategies, level of self-efficacy for alternative assessment strategies, and attitude towards alternative assessment, and their relationship with other variables. To achieve the aims of the study, a descriptive research approach was utilized. A 5-point self-rated questionnaire was developed. It consists of three sections: Actual use of alternative assessment strategies (21 items), self-efficacy for alternative assessment strategies (21 items), and attitude towards alternative assessment (27 items). The psychometric proper
... Show MoreEnvironmental exposure to active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) can have negative effects on the health of ecosystems and humans. While numerous studies have monitored APIs in rivers, these employ different analytical methods, measure different APIs, and have ignored many of the countries of the world. This makes it difficult to quantify the scale of the problem from a global perspective. Furthermore, comparison of the existing data, generated for different studies/regions/continents, is challenging due to the vast differences between the analytical methodologies employed. Here, we present a global-scale study of API pollution in 258 of the world’s rivers, representing the environmental influence of 471.4 million people across
... Show MoreThe flexible joint robot manipulators provide various benefits, but also present many control challenges such as nonlinearities, strong coupling, vibration, etc. This paper proposes optimal second order integral sliding mode control (OSOISMC) for a single link flexible joint manipulator to achieve robust and smooth performance. Firstly, the integral sliding mode control is designed, which consists of a linear quadratic regulator (LQR) as a nominal control, and switching control. This control guarantees the system robustness for the entire process. Then, a nonsingularterminal sliding surface is added to give a second order integral sliding mode control (SOISMC), which reduces chartering effect and gives the finite time convergence as well. S
... Show MoreMetal contents in vegetables are interesting because of issues related to food safety and potential health risks. The availability of these metals in the human body may perform many biochemical functions and some of them linked with various diseases at high levels. The current study aimed to evaluate the concentration of various metals in common local consumed vegetables using ICP-MS. The concentrations of metals in vegetables of tarragon, Bay laurel, dill, Syrian mesquite, vine leaves, thymes, arugula, basil, common purslane and parsley of this study were found to be in the range of, 76-778 for Al, 10-333 for B, 4-119 for Ba, 2812-24645 for Ca, 0.1-0.32 for Co, 201-464 for Fe, 3661-46400 for K, 0.31–1.
... Show MoreA single step extraction-cleanup procedure using porous membrane-protected micro-solid phase extraction (μ-SPE) in conjunction with liquid chromatography–tandem mass spectrometry for the extraction and determination of aflatoxins (AFs) B1, B2, G1 and G2 from food was successfully developed. After the extraction, AFs were desorbed from the μ-SPE device by ultrasonication using acetonitrile. The optimum extraction conditions were: sorbent material, C8; sorbent mass, 20 mg; extraction time, 90 min; stirring speed, 1000 rpm; sample volume, 10 mL; desorption solvent, acetonitrile; solvent volume, 350 μL and ultrasonication period, 25 min without salt addition. Under the optimum conditions, enrichment factor of 11, 9, 9 and 10 for AFG2, AFG1
... Show MoreIn this work, the spectra for plasma glow produced by pulse
Nd:YAG laser (λ=532 and 1064nm) on Ag:Al alloy with same molar
ratio samples in distilled water were analyzed by studying the atomic
lines compared with aluminum and silver strong standard lines. The
effect of laser energies of the range 300 to 800 mJ on spectral lines,
produced by laser ablation, were investigated using optical
spectroscopy. The electron temperature was found to be increased
from 1.698 to 1.899 eV, while the electron density decreased from
2.247×1015 to 5.08×1014 cm-3 with increasing laser energy from 300
to 800 mJ with wavelength of 1064 nm. The values of electron
temperature using second harmonic frequency are greater than of<
