ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Estrogens has traditionally been known as the female hormone, but this idea has been challenged in early 1990’s and an essential physiological role for estrogen in male fertility was identified. Phytoestrogens are naturally occurring non-steroidal plant chemicals that can act like the female hormone estrogen. The herbs ( anise alfalfa and vervain ) chosen in this study contain phytoestrogens. OBJECTIVE: Previous studies demonstrated controversy of the effects of phytoestrogens on the rat testes .Hence, the present investigation was undertaken to investigate the influence of typical dose of herbs containing phytoestrogen on the rat testis. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Twenty-four apparently normal mature male rats were divided into four groups of 6 animals each. The first "control" group received only 4ml of distilled water as a placebo. The second group received 40mg/kg of anise seed; the third group received 53.3 mg/kg of dried herb of vervain and the fourth group received 400 mg /kg of alfalfa seeds. All experimental groups received the doses through orogastric tube daily for fourteen days. Testicular histology was evaluated by light and enzyme histochemistry. Plasma FSH and testosterone concentrations were taken to support our results. RESULTS: Histological examination of anise, alfalfa and vervain – treated groups showed an increase in the height of germinal epithelia. There was marked lipoprotein lipase activity in the whole of the interstitial tissue which is more in amount in experimental groups than that in control group. Acid phosphatase granules were infiltered the seminiferous epithelia mildly in control group , moderately in anise and vervain groups and markedly in alfalfa group. The number of interstitial cells showing marked acid phosphatase activity was higher in all experimental groups than that in control group. Alkaline phosphatase exhibited intense activity in the boundary tissue of the seminiferous tubules in testes of control and experimental groups but it appeared thicker in the latter. CONCLUSION: The low dose and short duration of treatment used in our study made these phytoestrogen – containing herbs to have a stimulatory effect on leydig cell steroidogenesis. This study also demonstrated that aniseed being the most potent of the three herbs followed by alfalfa in stimulating testosterone synthesis. This is possibly attributed to the coumarin constituent of aniseed and alfalfa. KEY WORDS: phytoestrogen-containing herbs, testis, acid phosphatase, alkaline phosphatase, lipoprotein lipase
Since the Internet has been more widely used and more people have access to multimedia content, copyright hacking, and piracy have risen. By the use of watermarking techniques, security, asset protection, and authentication have all been made possible. In this paper, a comparison between fragile and robust watermarking techniques has been presented to benefit them in recent studies to increase the level of security of critical media. A new technique has been suggested when adding an embedded value (129) to each pixel of the cover image and representing it as a key to thwart the attacker, increase security, rise imperceptibility, and make the system faster in detecting the tamper from unauthorized users. Using the two watermarking ty
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KE Sharquie, JR Al-Rawi, AA Noaimi, MM Jabir, Iraqi Postgraduate Medical Journal, 2009
S Khalifa E, AR Jamal R, N Adil A, J Munqithe M…, 2009
The present study attempts to examine verbal/nonverbal impoliteness in the classroom interaction and outside it in one of the movies, namely, The Marva Collins. Impoliteness, which is significantly studied within pragmatics, is a negative attitude towards particular behaviors. It always presumes to have emotional concerns for at least one participant who has caused it. This study is an attempt to examine verbal/nonverbal impoliteness in The Marva Collins movie. The study aims to investigate the different types of impoliteness strategies used in the four selected scenes and find out whether the speaker’s status has anything to do with the types of impoliteness. Besides, the functions performed are also examined by following a qual
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The fauna of bees (Hymenoptera, Apoidea) from different regions of Iraq is surveyed in this study; there were 16 species, 13 genera that belong to four families which are collected in this investigation.
Also, all the species that are recorded for Iraq in previous investigations are revised; totally there are 110 species, 32 genera belonging to five families: Apidae, Andernidae, Colletidae, Halictidae and Megachilidae were listed.
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A theoretical study has been proposed to investigate the effects of different laser radiations (Nd - glass, DF and C02) as a heating source on different glass samples (Optical glass, Bk - 7 and Soda - lime glass) and different waves lengths (10.6, 3.8, 1.6) ???. The heat changes as which are resulted due irradiation with laser sources have been determined by using the one dimension mathematical relation as a function of time (t) and depth (z). The results of the study show ed that the irradiation with C02 laser had a greater effect than DF laser, while the effects of Nd - glass laser were minimal with a power density of (1.8*10?? w/m2) within atime(l^sec).(Forboth Kinds) The change in the temperatures were not exceeded than (70"K) in all sa
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