Given the paucity and toxicity of available drugs for leishmaniasis, coupled with the advent of drug resistance, the discovery of new therapies for this neglected tropical disease is recognised as being of the utmost urgency. As such antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have been proposed as promising compounds against the causative Leishmania species, insect vector-borne protozoan parasites. Here the AMP temporins A, B and 1Sa have been synthesised and screened for activity against Leishmania mexicana insect stage promastigotes and mammalian stage amastigotes, a significant cause of human cutaneous disease. In contrast to previous studies with other species the activity of these AMPs against L. mexicana amastigotes was low. This suggests that amastigotes from different Leishmania species display varying susceptibility to peptides from the temporin family, perhaps indicating differences in their surface structure, the proposed target of these AMPs. In contrast, insect stage L. mexicana promastigotes were sensitive to two of the screened temporins which clearly demonstrates the importance of screening AMPs against both forms of the parasite. Copyright © 2011 European Peptide Society and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
This research deals with study of the effect of additives on rheological properties (yield point, plastic viscosity ,and apparent viscosity) of emulsions. Twenty seven emulsion samples were prepared; all emulsions in this investigation are invert emulsions when water droplets are dispersed in diesel oil. The resulting emulsions are called water-in-oil (W/O) emulsions. The rheological properties of these emulsions were investigated using a couett coaxial cylinder rotational viscometer (Fann-VG model 35 A), by measuring shear stress versus shear rate. It was found that the effect of additives on rheological properties of emulsions as follow: the increase in the concentration of asphaltic material tends to increase the rheological propertie
... Show MoreThe research’s main goal is to investigate the effects of using magnetic water in concrete mixes with regard to various mechanical properties such as compressive, flexural, and splitting tensile strength. The concrete mix investigated was designed to attain a specified cylinder compressive strength (30 MPa), with mix proportions of 1:1.8:2.68 cement to sand to crushed aggregate. The cement content was about 380 kg/m3, with a w/c ratio equal to 0.54, sand content of about 685 kg/m3, and gravel content of about 1,020 kg/m3. Magnetic water was prepared via passing ordinary water throughout a magnetic field with a magnetic intensity of 9,000 Gauss. The strength test
Porcelain is one of the most important ceramic materials with a wide range of traditional and technical applications. Since most mixtures of porcelain have a high sintering temperature, bentonite has been added in this research to improve the characteristics of sintering and burning. The porcelain mixture consisted of the following Iraqi raw materials: 30% wt kaolin, 30 wt% non-plastic clay (grog), 10% wt sodium feldspar, 10 wt% potassium feldspar and 20 wt% flint. After the mechanical mixing process and transfer the powder mixture to the slurry by adding distilled water, then different weight percentage of the sodium bentonite(0, 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10) wt% was added. The specimens were prepared by using the solid casting m
... Show MoreAlginate from Large brown seaweeds act as natural polymer has been investigated as polymer and has been added to concrete in different percentages ( 0% , 0.5% , 1% and 1.5% ) by the cement weight and the study show the effect of using alginate biopolymer admixtures on some of the fresh properties of the concrete (slump & the density fresh) also in the hardened state ( Compressive strength , Splitting tensile strength and Flexural strength ) at 28 days. The mix proportion was (1:2.26:2.26) (cement: sand: gravel) respectively and at constant w/c equal to 0.47. The results indicate that the use of alginate as a percent of the cement weight possess a positive effect on fresh properties of co
... Show MoreThe current study deals with host-guest complex formation between cucurbit [7] urils as host and lansoprazole as guesti using PM3 (semi empirical molecules orbital calculations) also DFT calculations. In this complex, the formation of hydrogen bonding may be occurred through portal oxygen atoms(O2) of cucurbit [7] urils and amine groups (NH 2 )of the drug. The energies of HOMO and LUMO orbital’s have been computed for the host guest complex and its components. The result of the stabilization energy explained a complex formation.
Contracting cancer typically induces a state of terror among the individuals who are affected. Exploring how chemotherapy and anxiety work together to affect the speed at which cancer cells multiply and the immune system’s response model is necessary to come up with ways to stop the spread of cancer. This paper proposes a mathematical model to investigate the impact of psychological scare and chemotherapy on the interaction of cancer and immunity. The proposed model is accurately described. The focus of the model’s dynamic analysis is to identify the potential equilibrium locations. According to the analysis, it is possible to establish three equilibrium positions. The stability analysis reveals that all equilibrium points consi
... Show MoreThe research aims to find out the impact of wages and benefits systems on the performance of employees, which included the research community on a sample of employees in the company, and the sample consisted of (50) employees and an employee, A questionnaire composed as prepared (23) paragraph, use the promised statistically methods in data collected by the questionnaire analysis. The research reached a number of results, the most prominent of which were: There is a correlation between wage systems, benefits and performance of employees, and the presence of the impact of the systems of wages and benefits to the performance of employees. The research was presented a set of recommendations including: increasing the effectiveness of
... Show MoreRecommender Systems are tools to understand the huge amount of data available in the internet world. Collaborative filtering (CF) is one of the most knowledge discovery methods used positively in recommendation system. Memory collaborative filtering emphasizes on using facts about present users to predict new things for the target user. Similarity measures are the core operations in collaborative filtering and the prediction accuracy is mostly dependent on similarity calculations. In this study, a combination of weighted parameters and traditional similarity measures are conducted to calculate relationship among users over Movie Lens data set rating matrix. The advantages and disadvantages of each measure are spotted. From the study, a n
... Show MoreThe present study was carried out to determine the bacterial isolates and study their antimicrobial susceptibility in case of burned wound infections. 70 burn wound swabs were taken from patients, who presented invasive burn wound infection from both sex and average age of 3-58 years, admitted to teaching medical Al- Kendi hospital from October 2007 to June 2008. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was found to be the most common isolate (48.9%) followed by Staphylococcus aureus (24.4%), Citrobacter braakii (13.3%), Enterobacter spp. (11.1%), Coagulase-negative Staphylococci (11.1%), Proteus vulgaris (6.66%), Corynebacterium spp. (6.66%), Micrococcus (6.66%), Proteus mirabilis (4.44%), Enterococcus faecalis (4.44%), E.coli (4.44%), Klebsiella spp. (2.22
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