Background: Medicinal plants that possess antimicrobial and antioxidant properties have garnered significant attention for their role in maintaining food quality, improving safety, and impeding spoilage. They also can aid in controlling food contamination risks and augmenting the nutritional value of foods. Objective: The study aimed to obtain botanical extracts possessing antimicrobial capabilities and use them to inhibit the growth of molds and yeasts. Additionally, these extracts are aimed at prolonging product shelf life by harnessing their antioxidant attributes. Methods: Several microorganisms, including E. coli and Pseudomonas, were subjected to testing. Ethanolic alcohol, chloroform, and essential oil extracts were prepared;

This study presents, for the first time, an innovative Jet Plasma-assisted technique for the green synthesis of TiO₂@Ag core–shell nanoparticles using chard leaf extract as a natural reducing and stabilizing agent. The Jet Plasma provides a highly energetic environment that accelerates nucleation and core–shell formation at low temperatures without toxic precursors. The synthesized nanoparticles exhibited uniform and stable structures, as confirmed by comprehensive characterization techniques including X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and zeta potential analysis. XRD patterns confirmed the crystalline anatase

In this study, Al2O3 thin films were prepared by dc reactive sputtering technique using different gas mixtures of argon and oxygen gases (90:10, 70:30, 50:50, 30:70, and 10:90). These films were characterized to introduce their surface morphology and elemental composition as functions of the oxygen content in the gas mixture. The gas mixing ratio plays a crucial role in controlling the nanoscale morphology of the prepared thin films. The [Al]/[O] ratio varies non-linearly with the Ar:O2​ mixing ratio. Increasing the oxygen content leads to a progressive decrease in surface roughness, resulting in smoother and more uniform films with finer granular features. These results presented herein are useful to optimize the sputtering process to ac

Background: Obesity represents a clear and
present danger to the health of children and
adolescents. Its prevalence among American
youth has doubled in the past 3 decades, and
there are now more overweight and obese
adults in the United States than adults of
normal weight.
Objectives of the study:
1- Finding whether screen watching among
adolescents has an effect on increasing
prevalence overweight and obesity.
2- The effect of other variables like physical
activity, eating in front of screen, eating under
stress on obesity and overweight among the
subjects sample.
Patients &Methods: During 3 months period a
cross sectional survey was conducted on 4
high schools at Baghdad with total

Wheat straw was modified with malonic acid in order to get low cost adsorbent have a good ability to remove copper and ferric ions from aqueous solutions, chemical modification temperature was 120°C and the time was 12 h. Parameters that affect the adsorption experiments were studied and found the optimum pH were 6 and 5 for copper and iron respectively and the time interval was 120 min and the adsorbent mass was 0.1 g. The values for adsorption isotherms parameters were determined according to Langmuir [qmax were 54.64 and 61.7 mg/g while b values were 0.234 and 0.22 mg/l] , Freundlich [Kf were 16.07 and 18.89 mg/g and n were 2.77 and 3.16], Temkin [B were 0.063 and 0.074 j/mol and At were 0.143 and 1.658 l/g] and for Dubinin-Radushkev

In this paper, a procedure to establish the different performance measures in terms of crisp value is proposed for two classes of arrivals and multiple channel queueing models, where both arrival and service rate are fuzzy numbers. The main idea is to convert the arrival rates and service rates under fuzzy queues into crisp queues by using graded mean integration approach, which can be represented as median rule number. Hence, we apply the crisp values obtained to establish the performance measure of conventional multiple queueing models. This procedure has shown its effectiveness when incorporated with many types of membership functions in solving queuing problems. Two numerical illustrations are presented to determine the validity of the

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