Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen and a model bacterium for studying virulence and bacterial social traits. While it can be isolated in low numbers from a wide variety of environments including soil and water, it can readily be found in almost any human/animal-impacted environment. It is a major cause of illness and death in humans with immunosuppressive and chronic conditions, and infections in these patients are difficult to treat due to a number of antibiotic resistance mechanisms and the organism’s propensity to form multicellular biofilms. One hundred twenty clinical samples and forty hospital environmental samples (various sources) were collected from hospitals in Baghdad city during the period from Oc

Objectives: During the COVID-19 pandemic, dentists have had to work under stressful conditions due to the nature of their work. Personal protection equipment (PPE) has become mandatory for work in the dentistry field. This study aimed to examine dentists' practices and attitudes regarding the use of PPE and the associated drawbacks and cost implications during the pandemic.

Methods: A questionnaire-based survey was used and was divided into five sections dedicated to collect demographic variables and to examine the dentists' practices, attitudes toward PPE, drawbacks, and cost of using PPE. Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare different sections of

Wettability of CO2-brine-mineral systems plays a vital role during geological CO2-storage. Residual trapping is lower in deep saline aquifers where the CO2 is migrating through quartz rich reservoirs but CO2 accumulation within a three-way structural closure would have a high storage volume due to higher CO2 saturation in hydrophobic quartz rich reservoir rock. However, such wettability is only poorly understood at realistic subsurface conditions, which are anoxic or reducing. As a consequence of the reducing environment, the geological formations (i.e. deep saline aquifers) contain appreciable concentrations of various organic acids. We thus demonstrate here what impact traces of organic acids exposed to storage rock have on their wettabil

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 bacter

      In this study, simple, low cost, precise and speed spectrophotometric methods development for evaluation of sulfacetamide sodium are described. The primary approach contains conversion of sulfacetamide sodium to diazonium salt followed by a reaction with p-cresol as a reagent in the alkaline media.  The colored product has an orange colour with absorbance at λmax 450 nm. At the concentration range of (5.0-100 µg.mL^-1), the Beer̆ s Low is obeyed with correlation coefficient (R²= 0.9996), limit of detection as 0.2142 µg.mL^-1, limit of quantification as 0.707 µg.mL^-1 and molar absorptivity as 1488.249 L.mol^-1.cm^-1. The other approach, cloud point extraction w

Liquid membrane electrodes for the determination iron(III) were constructed based on chloramphenicol sodium succinate and iron(III) CPSS-Fe(III) as ion pair complex, with four plasticizers Di-butyl phosphate (DBP); Di-butyl phthalate (DBPH); Di-octyl phthalate (DOP); Tri-butyl phosphate (TBP); in PVC matrix . These electrodes give Nernstian and sub-Nernstian slopes (19.79, 24.60, 16.01 and 13.82mV/decade) and linear ranges from (1x10-5-1x10-2 M, 1x10-5-1x10-2 M, 1x10-6-1x10-2 M and 1x10-5-1x10-2 M) respectively. The best electrode was based on DBP plasticizer which gave a slope 19.79 mV/decade, correlation coefficient 0.9999, detection limit of 9×10-6 M, lifetime 37 day displayed good stability and reproducibility and used to determine

Simple, precise and economic batch and flow injection analysis (FIA)-spectrophotometric methods have been established for simultaneous determination of salbutamol sulfate (SLB) in bulk powder and pharmaceutical forms. Both methods based on diazotization coupling reaction of SLB with another drug compound (sulfadimidine) as a safe and green diazotization agent in alkaline medium. At 444 nm, the maximum absorption of the orange azo-dye product was observed. A thorough investigation of all chemical and physical factors was conducted for batch and FIA procedures to achieve high sensitivity. Under the optimized experimental variables, SLB obeys Beer’s law in the concentration range of 0.25-4 and 10-100 μg/mL with limits of detection of 0.0

Simple, precise and economic batch and flow injection analysis (FIA)-spectrophotometric methods have been established for simultaneous determination of salbutamol sulfate (SLB) in bulk powder and pharmaceutical forms. Both methods based on diazotization coupling reaction of SLB with another drug compound (sulfadimidine) as a safe and green diazotization agent in alkaline medium. At 444 nm, the maximum absorption of the orange azo-dye product was observed. A thorough investigation of all chemical and physical factors was conducted for batch and FIA procedures to achieve high sensitivity. Under the optimized experimental variables, SLB obeys Beer’s law in the concentration range of 0.25-4 and 10-100 μg/mL with limits of detection o

A spectrophotometric method has been proposed for the determination of two drugs containing phenol group [phenylephrine hydrochloride (PHP) and salbutamol sulphate (SLB)] in pharmaceutical dosage forms. The method is based on the diazotization reaction of metoclopramide hydrochloride (MCP) and coupling of the diazotized reagent with drugs in alkaline medium to give intense orange colored product (?max at 470 nm for each of PHP and SLB). Variable parameters such as temperature, reaction time and concentration of the reactants have been analyzed and optimized. Under the proposed optimum condition, Beer’s law was obeyed in the concentration range of 1-32 and 1-14 ?g mL-1 for PHP and SLB, respectively. The limit of detection (LOD) and l

Metoclopramide (MCP) ion selective electrodes based on metoclopramide-phosphotungstic acid (MCP-PT) ion pair complex in PVC matrix membrane were constructed. The plasticizers used were tri-butyl phosphate (TBP), di-octyl phenyl phosphonate (DOPP), di-butyl phthalate (DBPH), di-octyl phthalate (DOP), di-butyl phosphate (DBP), bis 2-ethyl hexyl phosphate (BEHP). The sensors based on TBP, DOPP, DBPH and DOP display a fast, stable and linear response with slopes 59.9, 57.7, 57.4, 55.3 mV/decade respectively at pH ranged 2-6. The linear concentration range between 1.0×10^-5 – 1.0×10^-2 M with detection limit 3.0×10^-6 and 4.0×10^-6 M for electrodes using TBP, DOPP and DBPH while e