Phenolic Content and Antioxidant, Antibacterial Activities of Ethanolic Extract From Lemon Balm and Oregano Plants

The antioxidant and antibacterial activities of ethanolic extract and phenolic compounds extract of Lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) and Oregano (Oreganum vulgare) plants were studied; the phenolic content and the relationship between these compounds and the above activities were also investigated. The results showed that the Lemon balm had the highest phenolic content (56.5% mg g) and the phenolic content of Oregano was twice lower than Lemon balm. Lemon balm has the highest antioxidant activity which causes lipid peroxidation inhibition activity of linoleic acid (90.5%), this activity was more than ?-tocopherole antioxidant activity (79.3 %). It was found that the main source of antioxidant activity of these plants was belonging to phenolic compounds and the results proved the strong relationship between antioxidant activity and phenolic content. The ethanolic extract of Lemon balm was exhibited strong antibacterial activity ,the inhibition included all bacterial isolates , with highest inhibition zone against Bacillus cereus ( 26 mm), while Oregano did not exhibit clear antibacterial activity, Aeromonas hydrophila was the most resistant isolate . It was obvious from the results of effect of phenolic compounds on bacteria that no relationship between antibacterial activity and phenolic content and the inhibition may be due to other compounds

Proton and Neutron Pairing Properties within a mixed volume-surface pairing force using SKI3-HFB Theory

This work aims at a systematic investigations of the pairing properties and Fermi properties from the proton drip-line to the neutron drip-line. In order to provide more accurate mass formula with skyrme SKI3 force, the global descriptive power of the SKI3-HFB model for pairing properties are made in this study. Systematic Skyrme SKI3-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov calculations with a mixed volume-surface pairing force are carried out to study the ground-state neutron and proton pairing gap, neutron and proton pairing energy and neutron and proton Fermi energy for about 2095 even-even nuclei ranging from $2\le{Z}\le110$ to $2\le{N}\le236$. The calculated results of neutron and proton pairing gap are compared with experimental data using the difference-point formulas $\Delta^{(3)}, \Delta^{(4)}$ and $\Delta^{(5)}$, and also compared with the neutron and proton pairing gap of Lipkin-Nogami model. It is shown that the Skyrme-SKI3 functional with the mixed volume-surface pairing force can be successfully used for describing the ground-state pairing and Fermi properties of the investigated nuclei, in particularly the neutron-rich nuclei and the exotic nuclei near the neutron drip-line. On the other hand, the calculated neutron and proton pairing gap are in good agreement with the available experimental values of the neutron and proton pairing gap of the difference-point formulas $\Delta^{(3)}, \Delta^{(4)}$ and $\Delta^{(5)}$ and with the data of Lipkin-Nogami model over the whole nuclear chart.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figure

Particle-Particle Collective Excitations of Sn isotopes

In this paper, energy-level schemes and reduced electric transition strengths of neutron-rich Tin isotopes 102, 110, 116, 120, 122Sn (Z=50) are studied using collective models, that is, particle-particle Tamm-Dancoff Approximation and particle-particle Random Phase Approximation. According to these models, the excited states of closed-core A+2 systems with multipolarity J and isospin T can be described as a linear combination of particle-particle pairs. In our investigation, the low-lying states of the investigated isotopes 102, 110, 116, 120, 122Sn are described by acting two-particle operators on a correlated core 100Sn, 108Sn, 114Sn, 118Sn, and 120Sn, respectively. The Hamiltonian is diagonalized within the model space include {1g7/2, 2d5/2, 2d3/2, 3s1/2 and 1h11/2} orbits, using the matrix elements of neutron-neutron interaction and modified surface delta interaction. The calculated values are checked by using the resultant eigenvalues and eigenvectors to calculate the excitation energies and reduced electric transition strengths. Our calculated results are compared to the available experimental data, and these comparisons led to reasonable agreements. Effective charges are also used to account for the core polarization effect

Comparison between Feature Based and Deep Learning Recognition Systems for Handwriting Arabic Numbers

Feature extraction from images is an essential part of the recognition system. Calculating the appropriate features is critical to the part of the classification process. However, there are no standard features nor a widely accepted feature set exist applied to all applications, features must be application dependent. In contrast, deep learning extract features from an image without need for human hard-coding the features extraction process. This can be very useful to build a model for classification which can classify any type of images after trained with enough images with labels then the trained model can be used in different recognition applications to classify. This paper presents two techniques to build recognition system for Arabic handwriting numbers, the feature-based method shows accepted results. However, the deep learning method gives more accurate results and required less study on how Arabic number is written and no hand-coding algorithms needed for feature extraction to be used in the classification process. Keywords: Handwriting Recognition, Image Processing, Features Extraction, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Classification

Estimating the natural and artificial radioactivity in soil samples from some oil sites in Kirkuk-Iraq using high resolution gamma rays spectrometry

The natural and artificial radioactivity in soil samples from some oil sites of Kirkuk-Iraq have been estimated using a gamma spectrometry based on a high purity germanium (HPGe) detector. For this reason, soil samples have been collected from four sites; Henjera, Jabel Boor, Jambor and Qutan. It was found that the specific activity ranged from 7.31 to 63.33 Bq kg−1 for 226Ra, from 3.54 to 42.95 Bq kg−1 for 232Th, from 103.21 to 798.52 Bq kg−1 for 40K and from 0.7 to 9.53 Bq kg−1 for 137Cs. The results have been compared with the worldwide average values. The radium equivalent activity (Raeq), the absorbed gamma dose rate (D), the annual effective dose rate (AEDE), the external hazard (Hex), the internal hazard (Hin) and Gamma radiation representative level Index (Iγ) have also been calculated. The Raeq was 92.173 Bq kg−1, the D was 45.53 nGyh-1, the AEDE outdoor and indoor were 0.0959 and 0.224, respectively, the Hex was 0.242, the Hin was 0.329, and Iγ was 0.680. It has been concluded that no harmful radiation effects have posed to the population who live in the study area. Although, there are some areas where radiation effects have resulted higher than that of the international allowable radiation values

Implementation of Wireless Body Area Network Based Patient Monitoring System

WBAN has gained considerable attention and became an emerging technology at health services due to its wide range of utilities and important role to improve the human health. The proposed system consists of different components, Pulse rate sensor which uses the optical technology to detect the flow of blood. Temperature sensor is used to measure the temperature from the body. Peripheral hemoglobin oxygen saturation (SpO2), blood pressure and electrocardiogram (ECG) are measured by the nurses. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) reader with passive tags is used to identify the patient. Arduino UNO microcontroller is used for data processing. The patient parameters are transmitted via Bluetooth technology to the base station. The base station which is Raspberry Pi (RPi) B model 3 used to receive the collected data and acts as the web server, so the physician accesses RPi to display different information. The obtained results from different cases prove the high performance of the system and sensor nodes that are designed. The overall system operates within different environments conditions. If one sensor node is fall down, the other nodes are still operate and do not affect. Also we improve the speed of the system response. The usage of wireless communication to send the data instead of the wired one as it provides a greater mobility to the device. The cost is also minimized by utilizing the feature of sending multiple parameters via a single node. Keywords: Wireless Sensor Network (WSN), Patient Monitoring, Biomedical, sensors, Microcontroller, Arduino, Raspberry Pi.

Access to Finance for African SMEs: Do Women Entrepreneurs face Discrimination.

This study examines the gender disparity in Africa‟s small and medium business (SME) credit market. It shows how capital market imperfections can lead to second best solutions, so this research is significant for emerging economies. The gender gap between men and women is still there in Africa, and unless particular efforts are made to address the underlying issues today, it will continue to increase. The fact that black women make up the majority of the self-employed population isn't reflected in present industry targets for company activity, which is a problem. Women-owned businesses in Africa face unique problems, and this study evaluates whether financial service providers in the country are adequately aware of these issues