Flexible pavements are considered an essential element of transportation infrastructure. So, evaluations of flexible pavement performance are necessary for the proper management of transportation infrastructure. Pavement condition index (PCI) and international roughness index (IRI) are common indices applied to evaluate pavement surface conditions. However, the pavement condition surveys to calculate PCI are costly and time-consuming as compared to IRI. This article focuses on developing regression models that predict PCI from IRI. Eighty-three flexible pavement sections, with section length equal to 250 m, were selected in Al-Diwaniyah, Iraq, to develop PCI-IRI relationships. In terms of the quantity and severity of eac

The members of the family of Eentrobacteriaceae harbour a gene cluster called polyketide synthase (pks) island. This cluster is responsible for the synthesis of the genotoxin colibactin that might have an important role in the induction of double-strand DNA breaks, leading to promote human colorectal cancer (CRC). Eleven out of the eighty eight isolates (12.5%) were pks+, distributed as 7 (8%) isolates of E. coli, 2 (2.25%) of K. pneumoniae and 2 (2.25%) of E. aerogenes. The cytotoxic effects of selected pks+ isolates (E. coli and E. aerogenes) on HeLa cells were represented by decreasing cell numbers and enlarged cell nuclei in comparison to the untreated cells. Cytological changes were observed when the infected HeLa cells culture

This paper proposes a neuro-fuzzy system to model β-glucosidase activity based on the reaction’s pH level and temperature. The developed fuzzy inference system includes two input variables (pH level and temperature) and one output (enzyme activity). The multi-input fuzzy inference system was developed in two stages: first, developing a single input-single output fuzzy inference system for each input variable (pH, temperature) separately, using the robust adaptive network-based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) approach. The neural network learning techniques were used to tune the membership functions based on previously published experimental data for β-glucosidase. Second, each input’s optimized membership functions from the ANF

The members of the family of Eentrobacteriaceae harbour a gene cluster called polyketide synthase (pks) island. This cluster is responsible for the synthesis of the genotoxin colibactin that might have an important role in the induction of double-strand DNA breaks, leading to promote human colorectal cancer (CRC). Eleven out of the eighty eight isolates (12.5%) were pks+, distributed as 7 (8%) isolates of E. coli, 2 (2.25%) of K. pneumoniae and 2 (2.25%) of E. aerogenes. The cytotoxic effects of selected pks+ isolates (E. coli and E. aerogenes) on HeLa cells were represented by decreasing cell numbers and enlarged cell nuclei in comparison to the untreated cells. Cyt

The research aims to use a new technology for industrial water concentrating that contains poisonous metals and recovery quantities from pure water. Therefore, the technology investigated is the forward osmosis process (FO). It is a new process that use membranes available commercial and this process distinguishes by its low cost compared to other process. Sodium chloride (NaCl) was used as draw solution to extract water from poisonous metals solution. The driving force in the FO process is provided by a different in osmotic pressure (concentration) across the membrane between the draw and poisonous metals solution sides. Experimental work was divided into three parts. The first part includes operating the forward osmosis process using T

The removal of cadmium ions from simulated groundwater by zeolite permeable reactive barrier was investigated. Batch tests have been performed to characterize the equilibrium sorption properties of the zeolite in cadmium-containing aqueous solutions. Many operating parameters such as contact time, initial pH of solution, initial concentration, resin dosage and agitation speed were investigated. The best values of these parameters that will achieved removal efficiency of cadmium (=99.5%) were 60 min, 6.5, 50 mg/L, 0.25 g/100 ml and 270 rpm respectively. A 1D explicit finite difference model has been developed to describe pollutant transport within a groundwater taking the pollutant sorption on the permeable reactive barrier (PRB), which i