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Ecosystems provide humans with services that include benefits from food, fresh water, climate regulation, and socio-economic assets. The Mesopotamian marshlands are among the largest wetlands in the Middle East and they provide various benefits. However, ecosystem services of the Marshlands are consistently undervalued in national economic analysis and decision making. This study focusses on the Central Marshes, the first National Park in Iraq, and is the first attempt at valuing a series of ecosystem services from a valuable natural ecosystem in Iraq. We adopted the Toolkit for Ecosystem Services Site-Based Assessment (TESSA) for the determination of biophysical and economic values of services at the site level. Data on key ecosystem se

A total of 28 birds were examined to investigate about the distribution of the nematode Hadjelia truncata among some members of the avian family Columbidae in Al-Diwaniya Province, Central Iraq. The percentages of the infection rate with this nematode were 27.27, 37.5, 14.28 and 0 in Columba livia, C. palumbis, Streptopelia decaocto, and S. turtur respectively. Reporting Hadjelia truncata from Streptopelia decaocto constitutes a new host record.

This study has been performed to study the inhibitory effects of crude plant extracts of Bay (laurus nobilis) leaves against some bacterial isolates represented by Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermids, Proteus vulgaris, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, and Pseudomonas aeroginosa in vitro. The results showed that percentages of essential chemical of laurus nobilis leaves which represented by moisture, total oil, total ash, crude protein, crude fibers, carbohydrites and caloric values in dry weight are 5.96, 4.28, 14.2, 8.75, 24.8, 76.99%, and 284.92 kcal/100g respectively, the percentages of some major and minor mineral elements of laurus nobilis leaves powder which represented by Mg, Fe, Cu, Pb, Cd and As, are: 0.211, 0.1

Haemoproteus burhinus is described from the stone curlew, Burhinus oedicnemus saharae (Reichenow) from Al-Attariya, 45 km SE Baghdad city middle of Iraq. It is related to but differs from H. peireci in that it hypertrophied the erythrocyte and the erythrocyte nucleus is always laterally displaced in microgametocytes.

Groundwater is an important resource that can be used for various purposes. Various factors can change the chemistry of the GW, such as the chemical composition of an aquifer as well as the leaching of human waste into groundwater. The study area is a barren land covered by some sabkhas, in addition to some agricultural fields. The study aims to assess groundwater quality for drinking purposes using the Water Quality Index. The groundwater is chemically heterogeneous and has a wide quality range from very poor to excellent. Evaporation appears to be the controlling factor among the other shallow waters, while relatively deep water is related to rock-soil dominance. Rocks, land use and land cover have helped control the groundwater q

Brucellosis is possess a significant public health problem in Baghdad. In this study, we investigated the potential role of the PCR assay in detection of Brucella species, from patients suspect to have brucellosis, using blood samples in both human and animal. To establish a PCR technique for diagnosis of active brucellosis in our samples, DNA extraction was carried out using a commercial kit, and a laboratory extraction procedure. PCR amplification was done using 1 set of primers: B4/B5 for Brucella species. Extraction of Brucella DNA using the commercial kit was successful. The laboratory extraction was successful and more economic. A total of 178 peripheral blood

Biotreatment using immobilized cells (IC) technology has proved to be the most promising and most economical approach for the removal of many toxic organic pollutants found in petroleum-refinery wastewater (PRW) such as phenol. This study was undertaken to evaluate the degradation of phenol by Pseudomonas cells individually immobilized in two different bio-carrier matrices including polyvinyl alcohol-guar gum (PVA-GG) and polyvinyl alcohol-agar agar (PVA-AA). Results of batch experiments revealed that complete removal of phenol was attained in the first cycle after 150 min using immobilized cells (IC) in both PVA-GG and PVA-AA. Additional cycles were confirmed to evaluate the validity of recycling beads of immob

Rice is a major staple food for more than two thirds of the world population. Pathogenesis-related proteins-10 (PR10) have a range of 154 to 163 amino acid with molecular weight ~ 17 kDa.  They are acidic and generally intracellular and cytosolic proteins accumulate in plants in response to biotic and abiotic stresses. In the present study, a PR10 gene and its corresponding protein were characterized in O. sativa, O.  barthii, O. glaberrima, O. glumipatula, O. meridionalis, O. nivara, O. rufipogon and  O. punctata. The results revealed a narrow range of variation at both DNA and protein levels in all examined species except O. glumipatula. The latter showed a relatively