RESERVIOR CHARACTERISTICS OF KHASIB FORMATION IN AMARA FIELD, SOUTHERN IRAQ

The Khasib Formation of Late Cretaceous (Upper Turonian – Lower Coniacian) is considered important reservoir in the Amara oil field.Knowledge of reservoirs rocks composition including fluid saturation and mineralogical components is essential for formation evaluations. The current study represents an evaluation study of the Khasib Formation using logs and cored data to evaluate the Khasib Formation in terms of its mineralogical, lithological composition and its petrophysical properties such as porosity and fluid saturation. Logs data of 15 drilled wells in the Amara Field and cored intervals of the well Am11 from the Khasib Formation were conventionally processed and integrated. Also, the mineralogical components of the Khasib Formation were revealed using a simultaneous equation approach by computer processed interpretation (CPI), where, combination of 5 logs including gamma ray, sonic, density, neutron and resistivity was integrated.The results show that the Khasib can be subdivided into upper and lower unit. It suggests that the Khasib Formation mainly consists of limestone with abundance of thin shale streaks concentrated at the upper parts. In addition, the lower part has an averaged porosity of about 0.185 (18.5%) and better hydrocarbon saturation, whereas, the upper part has recorded 0.121 (12.1%) averaged porosity. However, the lower part seems to be narrower than the upper part in terms of its thickness. The study furthermore, identified that the Khasib has deposited in a ramp setting during a transgression event caused by sea level change. Further study is needed to reveal the diagenesis process which affected reservoir quality of the Khasib Formation using petrographical techniques and to assess the Khasib Formation using the routine analysis techniques to detect directly porosity and permeability from plug samples

Aerobic bacteria isolation from post-caesarean surgical site and their antimicrobial sensitivity pattern in Karbala city, Iraq

Objectives Surgical site infection represents a noteworthy issue in the surgery field and nosocomial infection, which is associated with expanded healing facility stay, patient suffering, reintervention, increase expenses and use a lot of antibiotic drugs. The latter helps in appearance and spread new strains of bacteria resistant to antibiotics. The contamination of the operating theatre, patients’ rooms and the medical and paramedical staff is a major cause of nosocomial infection. The aim of the study is to determine the bacteria isolates from caesarean section wound infections and their antimicrobial susceptibility patterns. Methods In this study, a cross-sectional survey was guided at the Hospital of Gynecology and Obstetrics and education in the holy city of Karbala-Iraq amid a time of 9 months (February 2014 to October 2014), disease after caesarean section was classified by the purulent. The study included collection 50 swabs from surgical operations patients rooms in the hospital including bed, patient dressing, as well as the nose and hands and the people working in the hospital to determine the sources of the wound infection. Results A total of 124 wound swabs were collected (75.81% ) had given bacteria growth, while the (24.19%) did not give any growth. More than half (57.77%) (mono isolate) while (32.97%) had (two isolations) in addition (9.57%) give more than two bacteria growth. The most commonly isolated bacterial species were Staphylococcus epidermidis (31.48%), Pseudomonas aeruginosa (18,51%) and Staphylococcus aureus (14.81%). And distributed the remaining isolates Klebsiella pneumonia (9.25%), Proteus mirabilis, Escherichia coli (5.55%) for each one. Followed by Enterococcus faceless, Acinetobacter baumannii and provident state in the rate by (3.7%). The lowest rate (1.85%) where the Citrobacter youngae, Proteus vulgaris. The results were isolated bacteria from surgical operations, patients’ rooms and hospital staff, S. epidermidis was the most common isolate (36.5%), Staphylococcus aureus 29.25%, Escherichia coli 17%, Enterococcus faeclis 9.7%, Pseudomonas aeruginosa 4.9%, Proteus mirabilis 2.4%, All bacterial strains isolated from Surgical site infections (SSI) were submitted to sensitivity testing, results showed various reactions toward different types of antibiotics used in this study. Conclusions S. epidermidis is the most common bacteria isolation from caesarean section wound infections and from hospital environment in Hospital of Gynecology and Obstetrics and education in the holy city of Karbala-Iraq

On the Existence of Terahertz Plasmons in Two-dimensional Semiconductor Heterostructures

Plasmons existing along a semiconductor heterostructure found in a high electron mobility transistor are studied. With the help of the electronic properties of group III-V semiconductor materials, a multilayer structure is described using an equivalent transmission line network. The existence of surface waves is investigated using the transverse resonance method, and it is established that the complex conductivity of the two-dimensional electron gas with a negative imaginary part yields surface plasmons in the terahertz frequency domain

Fabrication of CdS/CdTe-based thin film solar cells using an electrochemical technique

Thin film solar cells based on cadmium telluride (CdTe) are complex devices which have great potential for achieving high conversion efficiencies. Lack of understanding in materials issues and device physics slows down the rapid progress of these devices. This paper combines relevant results from the literature with new results from a research programme based on electro-plated CdS and CdTe. A wide range of analytical techniques was used to investigate the materials and device structures. It has been experimentally found that n-, i- and p-type CdTe can be grown easily by electroplating. These material layers consist of nano- and micro-rod type or columnar type grains, growing normal to the substrate. Stoichiometric materials exhibit the highest crystallinity and resistivity, and layers grown closer to these conditions show n - p or p - n conversion upon heat treatment. The general trend of CdCl2 treatment is to gradually change the CdTe material’s n-type electrical property towards i-type or p-type conduction. This work also identifies a rapid structural transition of CdTe layer at 385 ± 5 °C and a slow structural transition at higher temperatures when annealed or grown at high temperature. The second transition occurs after 430 °C and requires more work to understand this gradual transition. This work also identifies the existence of two different solar cell configurations for CdS/CdTe which creates a complex situation. Finally, the paper presents the way forward with next generation CdTe-based solar cells utilising low-cost materials in their columnar nature in graded bandgap structures. These devices could absorb UV, visible and IR radiation from the solar spectrum and combine impact ionisation and impurity photovoltaic (PV) effect as well as making use of IR photons from the surroundings when fully optimised

A global spectral library to characterize the world's soil

Soil provides ecosystem services, supports human health and habitation, stores carbon and regulates emissions of greenhouse gases. Unprecedented pressures on soil from degradation and urbanization are threatening agro-ecological balances and food security. It is important that we learn more about soil to sustainably manage and preserve it for future generations. To this end, we developed and analyzed a global soil visible-near infrared (vis-NIR) spectral library. It is currently the largest and most diverse database of its kind. We show that the information encoded in the spectra can describe soil composition and be associated to land cover and its global geographic distribution, which acts as a surrogate for global climate variability. We also show the usefulness of the global spectra for predicting soil attributes such as soil organic and inorganic carbon, clay, silt, sand and iron contents, cation exchange capacity, and pH. Using wavelets to treat the spectra, which were recorded in different laboratories using different spectrometers and methods, helped to improve the spectroscopic modelling. We found that modelling a diverse set of spectra with a machine learning algorithm can find the local relationships in the data to produce accurate predictions of soil properties. The spectroscopic models that we derived are parsimonious and robust, and using them we derived a harmonized global soil attribute dataset, which might serve to facilitate research on soil at the global scale. This spectroscopic approach should help to deal with the shortage of data on soil to better understand it and to meet the growing demand for information to assess and monitor soil at scales ranging from regional to global. New contributions to the library are encouraged so that this work and our collaboration might progress to develop a dynamic and easily updatable database with better global coverage. We hope that this work will reinvigorate our community's discussion towards larger, more coordinated collaborations. We also hope that use of the database will deepen our understanding of soil so that we might sustainably manage it and extend the research outcomes of the soil, earth and environmental sciences towards applications that we have not yet dreamed of

RANTES/CCL5 and risk for coronary events: Results from the MONICA/KORA Augsburg case-cohort, Athero-express and CARDIoGRAM studies

Background: The chemokine RANTES (regulated on activation, normal T-cell expressed and secreted)/CCL5 is involved in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular disease in mice, whereas less is known in humans. We hypothesised that its relevance for atherosclerosis should be reflected by associations between CCL5 gene variants, RANTES serum concentrations and protein levels in atherosclerotic plaques and risk for coronary events. Methods and Findings: We conducted a case-cohort study within the population-based MONICA/KORA Augsburg studies. Baseline RANTES serum levels were measured in 363 individuals with incident coronary events and 1,908 non-cases (mean follow-up: 10.2±

Gaia Early Data Release 3: The celestial reference frame (Gaia-CRF3)

Context. Gaia-CRF3 is the celestial reference frame for positions and proper motions in the third release of data from the Gaia mission, Gaia DR3 (and for the early third release, Gaia EDR3, which contains identical astrometric results). The reference frame is defined by the positions and proper motions at epoch 2016.0 for a specific set of extragalactic sources in the (E)DR3 catalogue. Aims. We describe the construction of Gaia-CRF3 and its properties in terms of the distributions in magnitude, colour, and astrometric quality. Methods. Compact extragalactic sources in Gaia DR3 were identified by positional cross-matching with 17 external catalogues of quasi-stellar objects (QSO) and active galactic nuclei (AGN), followed by astrometric filtering designed to remove stellar contaminants. Selecting a clean sample was favoured over including a higher number of extragalactic sources. For the final sample, the random and systematic errors in the proper motions are analysed, as well as the radio-optical offsets in position for sources in the third realisation of the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF3). Results. Gaia-CRF3 comprises about 1.6 million QSO-like sources, of which 1.2 million have five-parameter astrometric solutions in Gaia DR3 and 0.4 million have six-parameter solutions. The sources span the magnitude range G = 13-21 with a peak density at 20.6 mag, at which the typical positional uncertainty is about 1 mas. The proper motions show systematic errors on the level of 12 μas yr-1 on angular scales greater than 15 deg. For the 3142 optical counterparts of ICRF3 sources in the S/X frequency bands, the median offset from the radio positions is about 0.5 mas, but it exceeds 4 mas in either coordinate for 127 sources. We outline the future of Gaia-CRF in the next Gaia data releases. Appendices give further details on the external catalogues used, how to extract information about the Gaia-CRF3 sources, potential (Galactic) confusion sources, and the estimation of the spin and orientation of an astrometric solution