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
The possible effects of COVID-19 vaccines on reproductive health and male fertility in particular have been discussed intensely by the scientific community and the public since their introduction during the pandemic. On news outlets and social media platforms, many claims have been raised regarding the deleterious effects of COVID-19 vaccines on sperm quality without scientific evidence. In response to this emerging conflict, we designed this study to evaluate and assess the effect of the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA COVID-19 vaccine on male fertility represented by the semen analysis parameters.
The websites over time have become one of the important tools for communication between individuals among themselves and between individuals and economic units, and they have emerged as one of the important intangible assets to achieve income, as they have become a competitive tool and a marketing outlet for these units and a main means of communication that it uses to exercise its various major activities and achieve potential economic benefits. Therefore, there was a need to measure and display the value of these sites in the financial statements as intangible assets. Accordingly, the purpose of the research was to determine the costs of the websites owned by the economic unit by way purchase and sites that were created i
... Show MoreBackground: Iron homeostasis is crucial to many physiological functions in the human body, such as cellular activity, erythropoiesis, and the innate immune response. Iron deficiency anemia may occur from obesity's ability to disturb iron homeostasis. Obesity may be seen as a pre-inflammatory condition with mild, ongoing systemic inflammation. Additionally, an increase in hepcidin levels by chronic inflammation causes iron insufficiency in obese people. For this reason, this current experiment is designed to investigate the iron profile and some hematological and inflammatory parameters in obese adults in the Kurdistan region-Iraq.
Subjects and Methods: The cross-sectional study w
... Show MoreThe study aimed at interpreting the role of architectural design quality in in build competitiveness model in accordance with the proposal included the idea of architectural design quality for its removal; interesting design factors of the environment, good design of the spaces, and design aesthetic explanatory variable. The competitiveness dimensions; the level of innovation, stimulate research, and the quality of the company's products, and activating the role of human resources, entrepreneurship, profitability, market share and competitiveness, variable responsive. The study of construction companies in the Ministry of Housing and Construction has taken the Iraqi society for the study. The sample consisted of (48) manage
... Show MoreThis study presents determination of the paleostress magnitudes and orientation of Bekhme Structure in Shaqlawa area northeastern Iraq. Paleostress Analysis of slip-fault measurements is performed using Right dihedral, Lisle diagram and Mohr Circles methods. Depending on Mohr Circles, Bott law and vertical thickness, the magnitudes of the paleostress at the time of the tectonic activity were determined. Firstly, Georient Software was used to estimate the orientation of the paleostresses (σ1, σ2 and σ3). Secondly, using the rupture –friction law, taking into account depth of the overburden and the vertical stress (σv) was calculated to determine the magnitude of the paleostresses (σ1=4500 bars, σ2=1
... Show MoreThe aim of this work was directed to measure the cosmic ray (CR)
flux and the background (BG) absorbed dose rate for districts of
Baghdad city. The maximum values of CR flux was 2.01
(particle/cm2.s) registered for several Baghdad districts and the
minimum was 0.403 (particle/cm2.s) belonging to Al-kadhimiya
district, whereas the overall average value was 1.24 (particle/cm2.s).
The BG measurements showed that the maximum absorbed dose was
25 nSv/h belonging to Noab AL-Dhbat district and the minimum
absorbed was 19.01 nSv/h observed in Al-Ghadeer district, while
the overall average was 22.56 nSv/h, and this value is small than the
Iraqi permissible limit, which is restricted by Iraqi Center of
Radiation Pr
Rainwater harvesting could be a possible solution to decrease the consequences of water scarcity and energy deficiency in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). This study aims to calculate the water and energy (electricity) saved by rainwater harvesting for rooftops and green areas in Sulaimani city, KR, Iraq. Various data were acquired from different formal entities in Sulaimani city. Moreover, Google Earth and ArcMap 10.4 software were used for digitizing and calculating the total rooftop and green areas. The results showed that for the used runoff coefficients (0.8 and 0.95), the harvested rainwater volumes were 2901563 and 12197131 m³ during the study period (2005 – 2006) and (2019-2020). Moreover, by compa
... Show MoreFinancial Reporting Quality (FRQ) is one of the important topics in the financial management, it has the impact on the users decisions, it also effect on many other variables i.e dividend, therefore. This paper aims to provide a diameter of Financial Reporting Quality (FRQ) level for the companies listed on the Iraqi Stock Exchange. It also tries to show the FRQ effects on the dividend policy. The study sample was 13 listed companies in the Iraqi Stock Exchange for the period from 2007 to 2011. Kothari et al. 2005 model has been used to measure the FRQ, on the other hand the common stock share of the dividend was used to measure the dividend.
Many conclusions have been driven by the research
... Show MoreThe aim of this work is oriented to increase film cooling effectiveness value through numerical investigations for flow of Mach number not more than 0.3 around vane surface, to find the effects of inclination and compounds angles of round holes in staggered rows on adiabatic film cooling effectiveness of vane suction side. Multi cylindrical film cooling hole cases were studied with pitch ratio P/d =2 and 3, local blowing ratios M=0.382, 0.77 and 1.14, inclination angles a=30° and 45°, compound angles β= 0°, 15°, 30° and 45° and local momentum ratios I= 0.084, 0.34 and 0.756 for better cooling process.
A numerica
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