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
A laboratory experiment was carried out according to a completely randomized design with four repetitions on the seeds resulting from a field experiment applied for the two seasons, 2020 and 2021, to find out the effect of the cultivars (Ambar 33, Yasamin, Dijlah, Ambar Al-Baraka and Furat 1) and the harvest dates (at physiological maturity and after 7 and 14, 21 and 28 days of physiological maturity) on the vigour of rice seeds. The results showed the superiority of the seeds of the cultivar Anbar Al-Baraka at first and final counting, dry weight of the seedling, seedling vigor index and electrical conductivity, and the superiority of the seeds of Dijla cultivar at accelerated aging test and cold test without significant difference with th
... Show Morethe behavior of the first-order black and gray solitons propagtedin optical fiber in the presence of frequency chirp is studied analytically and numerically results show that phase profile of black solitons changes abruptly
Hierarchical temporal memory (HTM) is a biomimetic sequence memory algorithm that holds promise for invariant representations of spatial and spatio-temporal inputs. This article presents a comprehensive neuromemristive crossbar architecture for the spatial pooler (SP) and the sparse distributed representation classifier, which are fundamental to the algorithm. There are several unique features in the proposed architecture that tightly link with the HTM algorithm. A memristor that is suitable for emulating the HTM synapses is identified and a new Z-window function is proposed. The architecture exploits the concept of synthetic synapses to enable potential synapses in the HTM. The crossbar for the SP avoids dark spots caused by unutil
... Show MoreUV-Vis technique has been used to study the adsorption of para-nitroaniline (PNA) on Iraqi siliceous rocks powder. Adsorption isotherms were investigated, temperature effect on adsorption was calculated, Results showed that the adsorption was an exothermic process and the thermodynamic functions were calculated. The effect of the pH on adsorption was studied and the ionic strength effect on adsorption was studied, It was found that adsorption increases with the presence of sodium chloride ions. The kinetic study of adsorption before equilibrium showed that the adsorption was pseudo first order according to according (Lagergren equation).
One of the most popular and legally recognized behavioral biometrics is the individual's signature, which is used for verification and identification in many different industries, including business, law, and finance. The purpose of the signature verification method is to distinguish genuine from forged signatures, a task complicated by cultural and personal variances. Analysis, comparison, and evaluation of handwriting features are performed in forensic handwriting analysis to establish whether or not the writing was produced by a known writer. In contrast to other languages, Arabic makes use of diacritics, ligatures, and overlaps that are unique to it. Due to the absence of dynamic information in the writing of Arabic signatures,
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This paper presents an intelligent model reference adaptive control (MRAC) utilizing a self-recurrent wavelet neural network (SRWNN) to control nonlinear systems. The proposed SRWNN is an improved version of a previously reported wavelet neural network (WNN). In particular, this improvement was achieved by adopting two modifications to the original WNN structure. These modifications include, firstly, the utilization of a specific initialization phase to improve the convergence to the optimal weight values, and secondly, the inclusion of self-feedback weights to the wavelons of the wavelet layer. Furthermore, an on-line training procedure was proposed to enhance the control per
... Show MoreIn this work, the performance of the receiver in a quantum cryptography system based on BB84 protocol is scaled by calculating the Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER) of the receiver. To apply this performance test, an optical setup was arranged and a circuit was designed and implemented to calculate the QBER. This electronic circuit is used to calculate the number of counts per second generated by the avalanche photodiodes set in the receiver. The calculated counts per second are used to calculate the QBER for the receiver that gives an indication for the performance of the receiver. Minimum QBER, 6%, was obtained with avalanche photodiode excess voltage equals to 2V and laser diode power of 3.16 nW at avalanche photodiode temperature of -10
... Show MoreObjective: To identified the relationship between general and spinal Anesthesia upon breastfeeding and (demographic &reproductive) : Comparative Study. Methodology: The present study employs a descriptive comparative design held at the labor and delivery room , operational room for cesarean section and maternity word in maternity department at Al Emamain Al Kadhamain Medical City in Baghdad city. Data collection was initiated on 2nd January to end of March /2014. Purposive sample consisted of (150) mother and her neonate, The study sample divided into three groups:(50) under general anesthesia , (50) under
Through this research, We have tried to evaluate the health programs and their effectiveness in improving the health situation through a study of the health institutions reality in Baghdad to identify the main reasons that affect the increase in maternal mortality by using two regression models, "Poisson's Regression Model" and "Hierarchical Poisson's Regression Model". And the study of that indicator (deaths) was through a comparison between the estimation methods of the used models. The "Maximum Likelihood" method was used to estimate the "Poisson's Regression Model"; whereas the "Full Maximum Likelihood" method were used for the "Hierarchical Poisson's Regression Model
... Show MoreAn advertisement is a human activity as old as human societies. As it was practiced by each society in accordance with the circumstances of the times and the means of communication available. The evolution of advertisement in the modern era reflected many factors to become an essential part of the lives of individuals in the world. Interesting in television advertising has increased in particular because it is the first and most influential mass media in the minds of people.
Advertisements play a big role in our lives as individuals. As advertisements surround us where we have been found; and bring us many benefits; as well as their contribution to accelerate the process of economic development a
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