Antibiotic resistance is the major growing threat facing the pharmacological treatment of bacterial infections. Therefore, bioprospecting the medicinal plants could provide potential sources for antimicrobial agents. Mimusops, the biggest and widely distributed plant genus of family Sapotaceae, is used in traditional medicines due to its promising pharmacological activities. This study was conducted to elucidate the antimicrobial effect of three unexplored Mimusops spp. (M. kummel, M. laurifolia and M. zeyheri). Furthermore, the mechanisms underlying such antibacterial activity were studied. The Mimusops leaf extracts revealed significant antibacterial activities against the five tested bacterial strains with a maximum inhibition zone diameter of 22.0 mm against B. subtilis compared with standard antibiotic ciprofloxacin. The minimal inhibitory and bactericidal concentration values against tested Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial strains ranged from 3.15-12.5 µg/ml. However, weak antifungal effect was recorded against Candida albicans with MIC value ˃25 µg/ml. The 1, 1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) assay showed that M. caffra was the best antioxidant (IC50=14.75±0.028 µg/ml), while M. laurifolia was the least one (IC50=34.22±0.014 µg/ml). The phenolics in plant leaves extracts were identified and quantified by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) which revealed the presence of seven phenolic acids and four flavonoids. The abundant phenolic compounds were rutin (5.216±0.067 mg/g dried wt.) and gallic acid (0.296±0.068 mg/g) followed by myricetin (0.317±0.091 mg/g) then kaempferol (0.113±0.049 mg/g) as flavonoids. The antibacterial mechanism of M. laurifolia extract, as a representative species, induces ultrastructural changes in the model bacterium Staphylococcus aureus with cell wall and plasma membrane lysis as revealed by transmission electron microscopy. Overall, Mimusops species (M. laurifolia, M. kummel and M. zeyheri) are promising natural alternative sources for antimicrobial agents.
In the framework of this study, the phenomenon of transfer is probed pragma-linguistically and socio-linguistically concerning marriage situations among Iraqi EFL learners. The study also strives to look at the refusal strategies most commonly employed by Iraqi female English as a foreign Language (EFL) learners compared to their counterparts, American native speakers of English. The study involved 70 female participants who answered a Discourse Completion Task (DCT), which contained ten marriage proposals to be refused. Each situation entailed refusal of a person from a higher, an equal, and lower status. The researchers adapted Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss Weltz’s (1990) taxonomy of refusal for analyzing the data comprehensively. The
... Show MoreParticulate matter (PM) emitted from diesel engine exhaust have been measured in terms of mass, using
99.98 % pure ethanol blended directly, without additives, with conventional diesel fuel (gas – oil),to
get 10 % , 15 %, 20 % ethanol emulsions . The resulting PM collected has been compared with those
from straight diesel. The engine used is a stationary single cylinder, variable compression ratio Ricardo
E6/US. This engine is fully instrumented and could run as a compression or spark ignition.
Observations showed that particulate matter (PM) emissions decrease with increasing oxygenate
content in the fuel, with some increase of fuel consumption, which is due to the lower heating value of
ethanol. The reduction in
Background: Coronary artery disease (CAD) is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Clopidogrel, antiplatelet drug, has been widely used for management of CAD. Arylesterase, the activity of Paraoxonase-1 (PON-1), is mainly contributed in the biotransformation of clopidogrel to its active thiol form. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of receiving clopidogrel drug on the arylesterase activities in CAD patients. The effect of receiving clopidogrel drug on the antioxidant activity of arylesterase was also monitored by determination of malondialdehyde (MDA) level. Methods: One hundred CAD patients, who were followed-up for 5 days after reciving clopidogrel, and 50 healthy volunteers were included in our study
... Show MoreNowadays, cloud computing has attracted the attention of large companies due to its high potential, flexibility, and profitability in providing multi-sources of hardware and software to serve the connected users. Given the scale of modern data centers and the dynamic nature of their resource provisioning, we need effective scheduling techniques to manage these resources while satisfying both the cloud providers and cloud users goals. Task scheduling in cloud computing is considered as NP-hard problem which cannot be easily solved by classical optimization methods. Thus, both heuristic and meta-heuristic techniques have been utilized to provide optimal or near-optimal solutions within an acceptable time frame for such problems. In th
... Show MorePurpose: The purpose of the study is to compare and evaluate Earnings Management in Tunisia and Iraq. Theoretical framework: Earnings Management is an important topic that has been studied by a significant number of researchers, as well as those who are interested in the accounting profession. Earnings Management has gotten a lot of attention from academics, professionals, and other interested parties in recent years (e.g. Kliestik et al., 2020; Rahman et al., 2021; Gamra &Ellouze, 2021) Design/methodology/approach: The sample includes ten banks listed on the Bourse of Tunisia and Iraq Stock Exchanges for the year 2017. We have used a model of Kothari et al., (2005) as a tool to measure Earnings Management in both mark
... Show MoreIn the present study, radon gas concentration in the shallow groundwater samples of the Abu-Jir region in Anbar governorate was measured by using Rad-7 detector. The highest radon gas level in the samples is up to 9.3 Bq/L, while the lowest level is 2.1 Bq/L, with an average of 6.44±1.8 Bq/L. The annual effective dose is varied from 33.945 μSv/y to 7.66 μSv/y, with an average of 0.145±0.06 μSv/y. Consequently, the radon level in the groundwater studied is lower than the standard recommended value (11 Bq/L) reported by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). The potential source of radon is uranium-rich hydrocarbons that are leakage to the surface along the Abu-Jir Fault. This research did not indicate any ris
... Show MoreAbstract:
Objective (s): This study aims to assess nurses' knowledge and practice regarding physiotherapy protocol at intensive care units
Methodology: descriptive cross-sectional study design executed at the ICU in the city hospitals of AL- for the time of 13th October/ 2021 to 7th April /2022. Questionnaire filled by 75 nurses who work in ICU who had chosen by non-probability (purposive) selection collected the data. Then the researcher used an observational checklist to evaluate nurses’ practice. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics and SPSS.
Results: the study found a deficit in nurses’ knowledge and pra
... Show MoreThe multi-focus image fusion method can fuse more than one focused image to generate a single image with more accurate description. The purpose of image fusion is to generate one image by combining information from many source images of the same scene. In this paper, a multi-focus image fusion method is proposed with a hybrid pixel level obtained in the spatial and transform domains. The proposed method is implemented on multi-focus source images in YCbCr color space. As the first step two-level stationary wavelet transform was applied on the Y channel of two source images. The fused Y channel is implemented by using many fusion rule techniques. The Cb and Cr channels of the source images are fused using principal component analysis (PCA).
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