BACKGROUND: Diffuse astrocytomas constitute the largest group of primary malignant human intracranial tumours. They are classified by the World Health Organization (WHO) into three histological malignancy grades: diffuse astrocytomas (grade II), anaplastic astrocytomas (grade III) and glioblastoma (grade IV) based on histopathological features such as cellular atypia, mitotic activity, necrosis and microvascular proliferation. Epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is a 170-kDa transmembrane tyrosine kinase receptor expressed in a variety of normal and malignant cells regulating critical cellular processes. When activated, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) triggers several signalling cascades leading to increased proliferatio

In this work, strains and dynamic crack growth were studied and analyzed in thin flat plate with a surface crack at the center, subjected to cycling low velocity impact loading for two types of aluminum plates (2024, 6061). Experimental and numerical methods were implemented to achieve this research. Numerical analysis using program (ANSYS11-APDL) based on finite element method used to analysis the strains with respect to time at crack tip and then find the velocity of the crack growth under cycling impact loading. In the experimental work, a rig was designed and manufactured to applying the cycling impact loading on the cracked specimens. The grid points was screened in front of the crack tip to measure the elastic-plas

By using governing differential equation and the Rayleigh-Ritz method of minimizing the total potential energy of a thermoelastic structural system of isotropic thermoelastic thin plates, thermal buckling equations were established for rectangular plate with different fixing edge conditions and with different aspect ratio. The strain energy stored in a plate element due to bending, mid-plane thermal force and thermal bending was obtained. Three types of thermal distribution have been considered these are: uniform temperature, linear distribution and non-linear thermal distribution across thickness. It is observed that the buckling strength enhanced considerably by additional clamping of edges. Also, the thermal buckling temperatures and

The current study was designed to explore the association between the pigments production and biofilm construction in local Pseudomonas aeruginosa isolates. Out of 143 patients suffering from burns, urinary tract infections (UTI), respiratory tract infections and cystic fibrosis obtained from previous study by Mahmood (2015), twenty two isolates  (15.38%) were identified  from (11) hospitals in Iraq, splitted  into three provinces, Baghdad, Al-Anbar and Karbala for the duration of June 2017 to April 2018.  Characterization was carried out by using microscopical, morphological and biochemical methods which showed that all these isolates belong to P. aeruginosa.  Screening of   biofilm production isolates was carried out by usi

The influence of the grounded electrode area on the ignition voltage in capcitively coupled radio frequency discharge at 13.56 MHz in argon gas is studied experimentally. The results indicate a systematic decrease of the breakdown voltage with increasing grounded electrode area for the same pd value. Results show that the secondary ionization coefficient γ increases with the increase of grounded electrode area. Furthermore, results also the discharge current at the breakdown voltage increases almost linearly with the increase of electrode area suggesting an almost constant current density.

In this paper, a least squares group finite element method for solving coupled Burgers' problem in   2-D is presented. A fully discrete formulation of least squares finite element method is analyzed, the backward-Euler scheme for the time variable is considered, the discretization with respect to space variable is applied as biquadratic quadrangular elements with nine nodes for each element. The continuity, ellipticity, stability condition and error estimate of least squares group finite element method are proved.  The theoretical results  show that the error estimate of this method is . The numerical results are compared with the exact solution and other available literature when the convection-dominated case to illustrate the effic

Molecular farming has become one of the most significant implementations of modern biotechnology to generate modified plant crops to produce medicinal proteins. Agrobacterium is one plant genetic engineering tool that integrates genes of interest inside a host plant.  In recent years, the need to produce recombinant proteins as therapeutics has growing rapidly, and human glucocerebrosidase is one of the proteins that is need to treat disease. In this study, specific primers were designed to amplify Hu-GBA1 gene from constructed pGEM-GBA plasmid which was cloned into the plant expression vector pCAMBIA1304. The generated recombinant pCAMBIA1304-GBA plasmid was used to transform A. tumefaciens LBA4404

Membrane manufacturing system was operated using dry/wet phase inversion process. A sample of hollow fiber membrane was prepared using (17% wt PVC) polyvinyl chloride as membrane material and N, N Dimethylacetamide (DMAC) as solvent in the first run and the second run was made using (DMAC/Acetone) of ratio 3.4 w/w. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to predict the structure and dimensions of hollow fiber membranes prepared. The ultrafiltration experiments were performed using soluble polymeric solute poly ethylene glycol (PEG) of molecular weight (20000 Dalton) 800 ppm solution 25 °C temperature and 1 bar pressure. The experimental results show that pure water permeation increased from 25.7 to 32.2 (L/m2.h.bar) by adding a

Forward osmosis (FO) process was applied to concentrate the orange juice. FO relies on the driving force generating from osmotic pressure difference that result from concentration difference between the draw solution (DS) and orange juice as feed solution (FS). This driving force makes the water to transport from orange juice across a semi-permeable membrane to the DS without any energy applied. Thermal and pressure-driven dewatering methods are widely used, but they are prohibitively energy intensive and hence, expensive. Effects of various operating conditions on flux have been investigated. Four types of salts were used in the DS, (NaCl, CaCl2, KCl, and MgSO4) as osmotic agent and the experiments were performed at the concentration of