This paper reports a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) as a biosensor. The FBGs were etched using a chemical agent,namely,hydrofluoric acid (HF). This implies the removal of some part of the cladding layer. Consequently, the evanescent field propagating out of the core will be closer to the environment and become more sensitive to the change in the surrounding. The proposed FBG sensor was utilized to detect toxic heavy metal ions aqueous medium namely, copper ions (Cu2+). Two FBG sensors were etched with 20 and 40 μm diameters and fabricated. The sensors were studied towards Cu2+ with different concentrations using wavelength shift as a result of the interaction between the evanescent field and copper ions. The FBG sensors showed

In accordance with epidemic COVID-19, the elevated infection rates, disinfectant overuse and antibiotic misuse what led to immune suppression in most of the population in addition to genotypic and phenotypic alterations in the microorganisms, so a great need to reevaluate the genetic determinants that responsible for bacterial community (biofilm) has been raised. A total of 250 clinical specimens were obtained from patients in Baghdad hospitals and streaked on Mannitol salt agar medium. The results revealed that 156 isolates appeared as round yellow colonies, indicating that they were mostly identified as Staphylococcus aureus from 250 specimens. The antibiotic resistance pattern of the isolates for methicillin 37.17% (n=58), Amoxic

Background:SARS-CoV-2 infection has caused a global pandemic that continues to negatively impact human health. A large group of microbial domains including bacteria co-evolved and interacted in complex molecular pathogenesis along with SARS-CoV-2. Evidence suggests that periodontal disease bacteria are involved in COVID-19, and are associated with chronic inflammatory systemic diseases. This study was performed to investigate the association between bacterial loads of Porphyromonas gingivalis and pathogenesis of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Fifty patients with confirmed COVID-19 by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction, their age ranges between 20-76 years, and 35 healthy volunteers (matched accordingly with age and sex to th

     In this paper, the botnet detection problem is defined as a feature selection problem and the genetic algorithm (GA) is used to search for the best significant combination of features from the entire search space of set of features. Furthermore, the Decision Tree (DT) classifier is used as an objective function to direct the ability of the proposed GA to locate the combination of features that can correctly classify the activities into normal traffics and botnet attacks. Two datasets  namely the UNSW-NB15 and the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity Intrusion Detection System 2017 (CICIDS2017), are used as evaluation datasets. The results reveal that the proposed DT-aware GA can effectively find the relevant features from

Infection with the protozoan parasite Toxoplasma gondii is widely prevalent in humans and animals. Infection with Toxoplasma may associate with miscarriage in many pregnant women due to infection. In this study, the level of lutetropic hormone (LTH), folliclestimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) was measured in pregnant women suffering from toxoplasmosis using mini-VIDAS®technique. Results showed that pregnant women have high concentration of both LTH and FSH hormone(10.80 ± 6.53) ng/ml and (9.51 ± 2.40) μIU/ml respectively, while the concentration of LH hormone was lower than normal(4.49 ± 0.56) μIU/ml. Such finding is to suggest that infection with T. gondii is interfering with these hormones in pregnant women.

Tuberculosis status as the second leading causes of significant morbidity and mortality from an infectious disease worldwide, after human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Sample collection was conducted at the Institute of Chest and Respiratory Diseases/Baghdad Medical City in Baghdad. The collection interval was from August to October 2014, 629 suspected TB patients were examined during this period. The results revealed among total 629 specimens, 56 (8.9%) of the specimens were positive by direct examination and 573 (91.1%) negative specimens by smear microscopy. Fifty six DNA samples were extracted from positive ZN smears of sputum specimens and 40 samples from healthy persons (as control) were subjected to molecular diagnosis by real tim

BACKGROUND: HLA-B27 can effect clinical presentation and course of ankylosing spondylitis. Different detection techniques of HLA-B27 are available with variable sensitivities and specificities. OBJECTIVE: To compare serologic and molecular diagnostic techniques of detecting HLA-B27 status and to correlate it with some clinical variables among ankylosing spondylitis patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 83 Iraqi patients with ankylosing spondylitis. Clinical and laboratory evaluations were reported. HLA-B27 status was determined in all patients by real-time PCR using HLA-B27 RealFast™ kit; ELISA method was used as well to detect soluble serum HLA-B27 antigens using Human Leukocyte Antigen® kit. RESULTS:

A nano-sensor for nitrotyrosine (NT) molecule was found by studying the interactions of NT molecule with new B24N24 nanocages. It was calculated using density functionals in this case. The predicted adsorption mechanisms included physical and chemical adsorption with the adsorption energy of −2.76 to −4.60 and −11.28 to −15.65 kcal mol−1, respectively. The findings show that an NT molecule greatly increases the electrical conductivity of a nanocage by creating electronic noise. Moreover, NT adsorption in the most stable complexes significantly affects the Fermi level and the work function. This means the B24N24 nanocage can detect NT as a Φ–type sensor. The recovery time was determined to be 0.3 s. The sensitivity of pure BN na

To investigate the role of IL-6 and IL-8 in the immune-regulatory mechanisms involved in the recurrent spontaneous abortion of the first trimester of pregnancy. Serum level of IL-6 and IL-8 were determined in 25 women of age (20-35) years who had a spontaneous abortion of unknown aetiology during the first trimester of pregnancy .They were compared with the corresponding levels of 20 pregnant and non-pregnant women as control groups .cytokine levels were measured by (ELISA) technique .The women with spontaneous abortion had highly significant (P < 0.01) increased serum level of IL-8 and highly significant (P < 0.01 ) decreased level of IL-6 compared to those with normal pregnant and non-pregnant women. The results of this study ma