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
Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) is a growing health concern that usually appears during the second and third trimester stage of pregnancy and is characterized by carbohydrate intolerance of variable severity. The aim of the present study was to scrutinize the relationship between the G972R polymorphism of the insulin receptor substrate-1 (IRS-1) gene with GDM in the Iraqi female population. One hundred and twenty of blood samples taken from healthy women (control) and women with gestational diabetes mellitus in 3rd trimester stage of pregnancy, fasting blood glucose (FBG) and HbA1c% measured to diagnose GDM, lipid profile (cholesterol, triglyceride, HDL, LDL, and VLDL), insulin concentration, insulin resistance and beta cell function to
... Show MorePersons with spinal cord injury are at high risk of developing pressure injuries, and their caregivers are in a critical position to help prevent them. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an educational program for caregivers of persons with spinal cord injuries to prevent pressure injuries in Iraq. A pre- and post-test design was used and involved 25 caregivers of persons with spinal cord injury during the acute care phase in an SCI-specific unit of a hospital. A scale and questionnaire were used to gather the participants’ demographic information, pre- and post-educational program knowledge, and observations of their pre- and post-program performance of pressure injury preventive tasks. Descriptive s
... Show MoreThree hundred Iraqi people participated in demographic and attitudes study about red and white meat consumption. The mean age of the participants was 50 SD ± 11 years (mean 30-72); 51% were females and 49% males, mostly in forties who lived ≥ 5 years in Baghdad. The results showed that 80% of individuals prefer red meat. A 90% of people prefer fresh meat compared to frozen and processed meat. A 60% of people buy meat from popular markets. Nearly 87% of respondents believe the improving of livestock sector is essential and 80% of people confirmed there are obstacles to development this sector. An 80% of participates thought the reasons of the high prices of local fresh meat is the lack of planning and support to livestock sector. A survey
... Show MoreThe study aimed at identifying the strategic gaps in the actual reality of the management of public organizations investigated to determine the strategy used based on the study model. The study relied on the variable of the general organization strategy in its dimensions (the general organization strategy, the organization's political strategy and the defense strategy of the organization) The sample of the study was (General Directorate of Traffic, Civil Status Directorate and Civil Defense Directorate), formations affiliated to the Ministry of the Interior, for the importance of the activity carried out by these public organizations by providing them In order to translate the answers into a quantitative expression in the analysi
... Show MoreThe main objective of the present work is to find a method increases the efficiency of the airfoil that is used for blade in wind turbine, wing in aircraft, propeller and helicopter (like NACA 4412). By overcoming the separation of flow at high angle of attacks, a slotted airfoil had been used and solved numerically through connecting the pressure side in the bottom surface with the suction side in the top surface of the airfoil to energize the separated flow. Slot exit, width and slope were considered as a parameters of slot configuration to determine the effective design of consideration. Reynolds number was taken as [1.6 x106 ] and the angle of attacks were ranged from (0o - 20o ). The numerical solution with Ansys Fluent commercial prog
... Show MoreUtilizing the Turbo C programming language, the atmospheric earth model is created from sea level to 86 km. This model has been used to determine atmospheric Earth parameters in this study. Analytical derivations of these parameters are made using the balancing forces theory and the hydrostatic equation. The effects of altitude on density, pressure, temperature, gravitational acceleration, sound speed, scale height, and molecular weight are examined. The mass of the atmosphere is equal to about 50% between sea level and 5.5 km. g is equal to 9.65 m/s2 at 50 km altitude, which is 9% lower than 9.8 m/s2 at sea level. However, at 86 km altitude, g is close to 9.51 m/s2, which is close to 15% smaller than 9.8 m/s2. These resu
... Show MoreStatistical studies are reported in this article for an active galactic nuclei sample of different type of active galaxies Seyferts 1, Seyferts 2, and Quasars. These sources have been selected from a Catalogue for bright X-ray galaxies. The name of this index is ROSAT Bright Source Catalogue (RBSC) and the NRAO VLA Sky Survey (NVSS). In this research, multi-wavelength observational bands Radio at 1.4 GHz, Optical at 4400 A0, and X-ray at energy 0.1-2.4 KeV have been adopted in this study. The behavior of flux density ratios has been studied , with respect to the absolute magnitude . Furthermore, the Seyfert1 and Seyfert 2 objects are combined in one group and the QSOs are collectest in another group. Also, it has been found that t
... Show More<p><span>This research deals with the feasibility of a mobile robot to navigate and discover its location at unknown environments, and then constructing maps of these navigated environments for future usage. In this work, we proposed a modified Extended Kalman Filter- Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (EKF-SLAM) technique which was implemented for different unknown environments containing a different number of landmarks. Then, the detectable landmarks will play an important role in controlling the overall navigation process and EKF-SLAM technique’s performance. MATLAB simulation results of the EKF-SLAM technique come with better performance as compared with an odometry approach performance in terms of measuring the
... Show MoreThe brief description to the theory of propagation of electromagnetic waves in plasma was done. The cutoff and resonance regions have been showed. The principles of plasma heating at electron cyclotron resonance (ECRH) method have been mentioned. The numerical simulation to three different station: Tosca station in United Kingdom, ISX-B station in USA and T-10 station in Russia had been done. The optical depth and the friction of energy absorbed A have been calculated. The simulation results indicate that both and A are increase with size of the tokamak and it is possible to obtain full absorption in large tokamak.