Background: Manuka honey (MH) is a mono-floral honey derived from the Manuka tree (Leptospermum scoparium). MH is a highly recognized for its non-peroxide antibacterial activities, which are mostly related to its unique methylglyoxal content (MGO) in MH. The beneficial phytochemicals in MH is directly related to their favorable health effects, which include wound healing, anticancer, antioxidant, and anti-inflammatory properties. Aims: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effect of MH on pro-inflammatory cytokines (IL-8 and TNF-α) in patients with gingivitis and compare it with chlorhexidine (CHX) and distilled water (DW). Materials and Methods: This study was a randomized, double blinded, and parallel clinical trial. Forty-fiv

Experimental research was carried out to investigate the performance of CFRP wrapping jackets used for retrofitting twelve square reinforced concrete (CR) column specimens damaged by exposure to fire flame, at different temperatures of  300, 500 and 700ºC, except for two specimens that were not burned. The specimens were then loaded axially till failure after gradual or sudden cooling. The specimens were divided into two groups containing two main reinforcement ratios, ρ= 0.0314 and ρ= 0.0542. This was followed by the retrofitting procedure that included wrapping all the specimens with two layers of CFRP fabric sheets. The test results of the retrofitted specimens showed that the fire damaged RC

The estimation of recharge to ground water is the important basics to improve the use of ground water with other available resources, and to save ground water resource from depletion, especially when using large quantity of ground water during a long time such as for agricultural purposes. Al-Wand River Basin in Iraq suffers from water shortage of its requirement of Blajo–Al-Wand Project, and to cover this shortage, the ground water plays a good role to overcome this problem. In this study, three methods were used to estimate the recharge and ground water storage for Al-Wand Basin, these methods are: Water Table Fluctuation (WTF), Water Balance of Climatic for Basin, and Water Table Balance for Basin. The results showe

Zerumbone (ZER), a natural compound has been extracted from Zingiber zerumbet with known pharmacological activities. The aim was to determine the anti-human Burkitt’s lymphoma (Raji) cell effect of ZER. The 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5,-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay was used to determine cytotoxic effect while the Annexin-V-fluorescein isothiocyanate/propidium iodide-PI flow cytometric assays was used to determine apoptotic effect of ZER on the human Burkitt’s lymphoma (Raji) cell (ATCC CCL-86) cell line. The expressions of Bax, Bcl-2, and c-Myc genes were determined via real-time PCR. ZER suppressed the proliferation of Raji cells with a 48 h IC50 value of 5.1 μg/mL. Treated Raji cells also underwen

This study uses an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to examine the constitutive relationships of the Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) residual tensile strength at elevated temperatures. The objective is to develop an effective model and establish fire performance criteria for concrete structures in fire scenarios. Multilayer networks that employ reactive error distribution approaches can determine the residual tensile strength of GFRP using six input parameters, in contrast to previous mathematical models that utilized one or two inputs while disregarding the others. Multilayered networks employing reactive error distribution technology assign weights to each variable influencing the residual tensile strength of GFRP. Temperatur

Test results of nine reinforced concrete one way slab with and without lacing reinforcement are reported. The tests were designed to study the effect of the lacing reinforcement on the flexural response of one way slabs. The test parameters were considered is the lacing steel ratios of (0, 0.0025, 0.0045, and 0.0065), flexural steel ratios of (0.0025, 0.0045, and 0.0065) and span to the effective depth ratios of (11, 13, and 16). Two specimens had no lacing reinforcement and the remaining seven specimens had the lacing reinforcement. Four point bending test were carried out, one of the specimens was tested under the static load applied gradually up to failure and the other specimens were tested under repeated load (5 cyc

Modifying of HY/Zeolite is by loading nickel for applying catalyst in thermal catalytic cracking of furfural extract-40 from the lubricating base oil unit. The study involved the characterizing of HY-zeolite and promoted catalyst with nickel by X-ray diffraction analysis, Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), BET (Brunauer, Emmett, and Teller), and infrared ray analyses FTIR. The catalytic thermal cracking tubular reactor with a fixed bed with two type catalysts; HY/zeolite and Ni HY/zeolite, individually at a temperature of 580^oC with LHSV 5h^-1 was investigated. The results indicated that increase the conversion of catalytic cracking of furfural extract-40 also increases the yield of useful petroleum

The possibility of using zero-valent iron as permeable reactive barrier in removing lead from a contaminated groundwater was investigated. In the batch tests, the effects of many parameters such as contact time between adsorbate and adsorbent (0-240 min), initial pH of the solution (4-8), sorbent dosage (1-12 g/100 mL), initial metal concentration (50-250 mg/L), and agitation speed
(0-250 rpm) were studied. The results proved that the best values of these parameters achieve the maximum removal efficiency of Pb+2 (=97%) were 2 hr, 5, 5 g/100 mL, 50 mg/L and 200 rpm respectively. The sorption data of Pb+2 ions on the zero-valent iron have been performed well by Langmuir isotherm model in compared with Freundlich model under the studied

         The world's population growth and the increasing demand for new infrastructure facilities and buildings , present us with the vision of a higher resources consumption, specially in the form of more durable concrete such as High Performance Concrete (HPC) . Moreover , the growth of the world pollution by plastic waste has been tremendous. The aim of this research is to investigate the change in mechanical properties of HPC with added waste plastics in concrete. For this purpose 2.5%, 5% and 7.5% in volume of natural fine aggregate in the HPC mixes were replaced by an equal volume of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) waste , got by shredded PET bottles. The mechanical propert