Heavy metal (HM) pollution has long been a significant source of environmental deterioration and a problem for the safety of food. Iraqis prefer rice over any other food, and since heavy metals have a direct impact on health, their traces in rice have drawn particular attention. Before cooking rice, it is usual in Iraq to wash and soak it. Some 55 varieties of imported and local rice were sampled from Erbil city markets in 2022 with the aim of determining the concentration of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb before and after soaking. Standard procedure of acid digestions was applied on the raw and soaked samples. The solutions were analyzed using ICPE-9820 Shimadzu. The mean concentrations of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb (in mg/kg) in the rice samples before soaking was 0.655, 0.170, 0.160, 0.387, 0.489, respectively and after soaking 0.421, 0.109, 0.115, 0.124 and 0.336, respectively. The concentration of As and Pb was found to be beyond the optimum level of 0.2 mg/kg codex standards for rice; whereas Cd and Cr were within the proposed level of codex standards. Moreover, local rice showed higher concentration of (Cd and Cr), whereas (AS and Pb) concentration in imported rice was higher. Further, results validated that rice soaking can decrease levels of As, Cd, Cr, Ni and Pb (32.5%, 40.2%, 27.9%, 61.6% and 31.3%, respectively). These findings suggest that soaking as a kitchen practice has efficiency to evaporate metals and has a great influence on the reduction of toxic heavy metals and thus reduces exposure to toxic metals in rice
During the syrvey on natural enemies of whiteflies in Iraq, the following. predators were recorded.
This study focuses on the relative frequency of Streptococcus pneumoniae in children with culture-proven bacterial meningitis. The epidemiology has been investigated with clinical and laboratory findings in The Central Public Health Laboratory, Iraq from April to September, 2010. From (138) samples , (55) cases (39.85 %) were diagnosed by physician as bacterial meningitis, (23) cases (16.66 %) as viral menginitis , (18) cases (13.04 %) as different medical cases (e.g febrile convulsion , meningoencephalitis , epilepsy …etc) and (42) cases (30.43 %) as unidentified medical cases. For bacterial meningitis S.pneumoniae was isolated from (10) cases (18.18 %) only. The median age for bacterial meningitis was (130.75) month and the predomina
... Show MoreMany studies have focused on identifying and classifying freshwater fishes in Iraq, concerned with describing, organizing, and drawing up a list of freshwater fishes in Iraq or the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Within the most recent updates at the beginning of 2023, 53 native freshwater and 20 exotic (alien or introduced) fish species are recorded and described. This study reviewed the database of morphology and molecular studies of freshwater fish in Iraq and reported species while surveying the fish fauna at different water bodies of the country from 2010 to the beginning of 2023. In conclusion, 29 species (about 40.3%) of all 72 fish species in Iraq still need to be available information on their molecular data.
Objective: To examined the common frequency of cervical cancer in Iraqi women. Study Design: Descriptive study Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted at the Iraqi Cancer Agency and the Cancer Registry data from the Iraqi Ministry of Health provided assistance in data gathering from 1st April 2020 to 31st December 2021. Methods: The study examined 504 women diagnosed with cervical cancer. Their ages ranged from 20 to over 80 years. The data analysis employed descriptive statistics to determine the frequency, proportion, and incidence of cervical cancer. Results: The cervical cancer was predominantly caused by human papillomavirus in women in 2020 (1.29%) and 2021 (2.1%). In 2020, the number of cases of cervical can
... Show MoreUndoubtedly, Road Traffic Accidents (RTAs) are a major dilemma in term of mortality and morbidity facing the road users as well as the traffic and road authorities. Since 2002, the population in Iraq has increased by 49 percent and the number of vehicles by three folds. Consequently, these increases were unfortunately combined with rising the RTAs number, mortality and morbidity. Alongside the humanitarian tragedies, every year, there are considerable economic losses in Iraq lost due to the epidemic of RTAs. Given the necessity of understanding the contributory factors related to RTAs for the implementation by traffic and road authorities to improve the road safety, the necessity have been a rise for this research which focuses into
... Show MoreMany international companies have branches or agencies in Iraq and have large market shares, and this has contributed to the increase in the import of these companies' products. This process created an additional problem of handling a large number of expired or defective products. There are many methods that contribute significantly to reducing these problems. The most prominent of these is the activation of reverse logistics options in Iraq by international and local companies. This research aims to conduct a survey of the reverse logistics options approved by some local and international companies and compare between them. This paper found that Amaron, Hitachi, Apple, Samsung and Huawei have limited options for reverse logistics and that
... Show MoreThe present study aimed to determine the frequency of ABO and Rh blood group antigens among Sabians (Mandaeans) population. This paper document the frequency of ABO and Rh blood groups among the Sabians (Mandaeans) population of Iraq.There is no data available on the ABO/Rh (D) frequencies in the Sabians (Mandaeans) population. Total 341 samples analyzed; phenotype O blood type has the highest frequency 49.9%, followed by A 28.7%, and B 13.8% whereas the lowest prevalent blood group was AB 7.6%. The overall phenotypic frequencies of ABO blood groups were O>A>B>AB. The allelic frequencies of O, A, and B alleles were 0.687, 0.2 and 0.1122 respectively. Rhesus study showed that with a percentage of 96.2% Rh (D) positive is by far the mo
... Show MoreThe field experiment was conducted with the aim of developing and testing an automatic sprayer for agricultural spray experiments and studying the effect of spray pressure, spray speed and spray height on the spraying process. The effects of the major spraying factors (pressure, speed, and height) on the spraying performance of the automatic sprayer were studied. This study included several traits: First - the drop sizes - Second - the penetration of the spray into the vegetation cover - Third, the spray wasted. The results showed: - First: - Increase in coverage percentage when using the first speed, 2 km / h, which amounted to 26.85%. An increment in the spraying penetration of the vegetation cover was observed at the second speed
... Show MoreCalendula officinalis L. (Asteraceae) known as marigold is known to have several pharmacological activities and used for the treatment of several diseases as measles, jaundice, constipation and several inflammations. Marigold flowers contain several chemical constituents mainly flavonoids, triterpenoids and essential oil. In this study marigold flowers cultivated in Iraq had been investigated for its flavonoids content. The study revealed the presence of quercetin and kaempferol glycosides and the absence of myricetin glycosides. The flowers were extracted with ethanol 70% fractionated with different solvent and the flavonoids were isolated by preparative HPLC. The isolated flavonoids were identified by measuring melting points, UV, IR,
... Show MoreDiabetes imposes a substantial public health burden; according to the International Diabetes Federation, there were about 3.4 million diabetes related deaths worldwide in 2024, and in Iraq, the Federation reports that one in nine adults lives with diabetes in 2024, with 14,683 adult deaths attributable to diabetes and a total diabetes related health expenditure of 2,078 million United States dollars. The dataset analyzed in this study contains 1,000 records collected in 2020 from two Iraqi teaching hospitals and includes multiple clinical and laboratory measurements with three outcome classes, namely Non diabetic, Pre diabetic, and Diabetic, with a low prevalence of the Pre diabetic class and an imbalanced overall class distribution; the da
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