Leishmania is the causative agent of leishmaniasis, a widely distributed disease. Amastigote forms of Leishmania are intracellular and reside within the macrophage of the vertebrate host. Previous studies showed that certain Leishmania species may scavenge host factors for survival, specially sphingolipids, the key element of the eukaryotic membranes. In this study we have investigated the survival of new world L. mexicana amastigotes in murine macrophage cell-line in the presence and absence of foetal bovine serum (FBS). Results showed that there was no significance in the infectivity of amastigotes and also the number of parasite per cell; such findings suggest that L. mexicana amastigotes have its own pathway of sphingolipid intake and c

Direct measurements of drag force on two interacting particles  arranged in the longitudinal direction for particle Reynolds numbers varying from J O to 103 are conducted using a micro-force measurement system. The effect of the interparticle distance and Reynolds number on the drag forces  is examined. An empirical equation is obtained to describe the effect of the interparticle distance (l/d) on the dimensionless drag.

Abstract

     Travel Time estimation and reliability measurement is an important issues for improving operation efficiency and safety of traffic roads networks. The aim of this research is the estimation of total travel time and distribution analysis for three selected links in Palestine Arterial Street in Baghdad city. Buffer time index results in worse reliability conditions. Link (2) from Bab Al Mutham intersection to Al-Sakara intersection produced a buffer index of about 36%  and 26 % for Link (1) Al-Mawall intersection to Bab Al- Mutham intersection and finally for link (3) which presented a 24% buffer index. These illustrated that the reliability get worst for link

)/ Cellulose (CELL) blend solutions were prepared by solution blending followed by preparing of polymer metal complexes with Ag (I), Cu (II), Ni (II) and Co(II). Antibacterial properties were evaluated by dilute method against five pathogenic bacteria (Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumonae , Pseudomonas aeruginasa,, Staphylococcus aureus , Staphylococcus Albus ) . Polymer metal complexes showed different activities against the various microbial isolates. The polymer blend metal complexes showed higher activity than the free polymer blends.

Many industrial systems involve multiple criteria and objectives, and they are very complex problems in computational science, such as task scheduling. We propose bi-criteria and bi-objective scheduling problems, which are solved by two nature-inspired evolutionary algorithms, such as Simulated Annealing (SA) and Bee Algorithm (BA). This problem is characterized by scheduling a batch of tasks on multiple machines, and it is fundamental because the solution should focus on the simultaneous optimization of two conflicting objectives: the makespan minimization and the total tardiness minimization. This problem is NP-Hard, and therefore, two evolutionary methods were used to search for solutions intelligently in this huge, very complex

   Finite element method is the most widely numerical technique used in engineering field. Through the study of behavior of concrete material properties, various concrete constitutive laws  and failure criteria have been developed to model the behavior of concrete. A feature of the Finite Element program (ATENA) is used in this study to model the behavior of UHPC corbel under concentrated load only. The Finite Element (FE) model is followed by verification against experimental results. Some variable effects on the shear capacity of the UHPC corbels are also demonstrated in a parametric study. A proposed design equation of shear strength of UHPC corbel was presented and checked with numerical results.