The study aims to evaluate sustainable traffic management strategies for congested intersections in medium-sized Iraqi cities, with a focus on Al-Sa’a Intersection and Al-Jari Street in Hit City. These nodes face severe traffic congestion, delays, and infrastructure limitations that compromise urban mobility and sustainability. A multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) framework was employed to analyze three categories of interventions—engineering, planning, and administrative—based on five weighted criteria: traffic efficiency (40%), delay reduction (25%), cost (20%), environmental impact (10%), and social acceptance (5%). The methodology combined field data collection (traffic counts, travel time, and delays), GIS-based spatial analysis, an
... Show MoreUrinary tract infections are mainly caused by uropathogenic Escherichia coli, which represent a significant global issue along with the rising of antibiotic resistance and treatment challenges. The aim of this study was to evaluate ciprofloxacin efficacy as a treatment in animal models following infection with multidrug-resistant UPEC and multidrug-susceptible UPEC and to determine the nephrotoxic effect of these antibiotics on the renal cortex. Up to 76 E. coli isolates were collected from UTI patients in Baghdad province, characterized by morphological and biochemical features, and confirmed using the Vitek-2 compact system. Mice were orally infected via gastric gavage with G33 using a bacterial load of 107 cells/ml, followed by p
... Show MorePsoriasis, a chronic inflammatory dermatological condition, exhibits heterogeneous responses to anti-TNF therapies such as etanercept (ETN), underscoring the need for predictive biomarkers. This study investigated the association of interleukin-1 beta (IL-1β) gene promoter polymorphisms (rs1143623 C/G, rs752338864 C/G, and rs1143627 C/T) with ETN efficacy in 80 Iraqi patients with moderate to severe plaque psoriasis. Patients were categorized according to treatment response: responders achieved ≥ 75% reduction in the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index (PASI), whereas non-responders demonstrated ≤ 50% reduction. Post-treatment serum IL-1β levels were significantly higher in non-responders (50.35 ± 15.81 pg/mL) compared to respo
... Show MoreFor the design of a deep foundation, piles are presumed to transfer the axial and lateral loads into the ground. However, the effects of the combined loads are generally ignored in engineering practice since there are uncertainties to the precise definition of soil–pile interactions. Hence, for technical discussions of the soil–pile interactions due to dynamic loads, a three-dimensional finite element model was developed to evaluate the soil pile performance based on the 1 g shaking table test. The static loads consisted of 50% of the allowable vertical pile capacity and 50% of the allowable lateral pile capacity. The dynamic loads were taken from the recorded data of the Kobe e
Compounds of (ZnO)1-x(SnO 2 ) x were prepared with various proportions of tin oxide (SiO 2) (x = 0.0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0) by mixing zinc oxide (ZnO) with highpurity tin oxide and then sintering the mixture in an oven at a temperature of 1000 °C for a period of 1 h. The resulting powders were ground and pressed into tablets of 1 cm diameter and 0.5 cm thickness. The properties of (ZnO) 1-x(SnO 2 ) x composites flms were prepared and studied as sensitive to the diferent gases NO2 and H2 S. Thin flms were prepared from (ZnO) 1-x(SnO 2 ) x via pulsed laser deposition method using glass and single crystal silicon for investigation the morphology and gas sensing properties with a thickness of 150 nm. The morphology examinat
... Show MoreLowering specific energy consumption (SEC) in reverse osmosis (RO) plants is one of the most important criteria in water treatment industry. The present work focused on best suggested RO pilot plant configurations for minimizing specific energy consumption, finding the best configurations experimentally to recover the water with minimizing salts in permeate side in RO module, study the factors affecting the performance of single and two stage systems, TFC membrane is used in spiral wound module. Brackish water is used as feed solution with different concentrations (2000, 3000, 4000 and 5000 ppm). The operating parameters studied were permeate flux, rejection and SEC. The experimental results showed the permeate concentration increased and w
... Show MorePoly(ethylene oxide) is a promising material for solid-state lithium batteries due to its safety, ease of processing, and compatibility with lithium. However, conventional linear PEO falls short of practical requirements due to its limited ionic conductivity, a consequence of the high crystallinity of its ethylene oxide chains. This crystallinity hinders the movement of lithium ions, limiting its performance in solid-state battery applications. In this study, we successfully prepared the plasticized solid polymer electrolytes (PSPEs) based on poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)/ tetracyanoethylene (TCE) complexed with lithium bis(trifluoromethanesulfonyl)imide (LiTFSI) salt and studied the effect of TCE on structural, mechanical, electrical and elec
... Show MoreThis research explores the use of solid polymer electrolytes (SPEs) as a conductive medium for sodium ions in sodium‐ion batteries, presenting a possible alternative to traditional lithium‐ion battery technology. The researchers prepare SPEs with varying molecular weight ratios of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) and sodium tetrafluoroborate (NaBF4) using a solution casting method with dimethyl formamide as the solvent. Through optical absorbance measurements, we identified the PAN:NaBF4 (80:20) SPE composition as having the lowest energy band gap value (4.48 eV). This composition also exhibits high thermal stability based on thermogravimetric analysis results. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy re
... Show MoreThis case–control study aimed to investigate the relationship between the hypoxia‐related biomarker hypoxia‐inducible factor‐1α (HIF‐1α) and the epithelial‐mesenchymal transition (EMT)–associated markers E‐cadherin (E‐CAD) and N‐cadherin (N‐CAD) in saliva among smokers and nonsmokers with and without periodontitis and to assess their association with clinical periodontal parameters.
A case–control study was conducted, including 88 participants equally a