Background: Oocytes are susceptible to alterations in the various fatty acid contents of follicular fluid (FF), which may influence maturation and embryogenesis. Different fatty acids exert various effects on intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), which needs further studies to uncover the involved mechanisms. Objectives: To assess FF fatty acids in women undergoing ICSI and to correlate them with ICSI parameters, namely the total count of aspirated oocytes, oocyte maturation rate, fertilization rate and percentage of good-quality embryos. Methods: Fifty women undergoing ICSI were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. FF samples were collected during oocyte retrieval and were analyzed for fatty acids using gas chromatography. Fa

Abstract  

The aim of this paper is to investigate and discuss the mechanisms of corrosion of epoxy coatings used for potable water tanks. Two distinct types of Jotun epoxy coatings: Tankguard 412 contained polyamine cured epoxy and Penguard HB contained polyamide cured epoxy, were tested and studied using the electrochemical impedance spectroscopic (EIS) method. The porosity of epoxy coatings was determined using EIS method. The obtained results showed that the two epoxy coatings have excellent behavior when applied and tested in potable water of Basrah city. Polyamine is more resistance to water corrosion compared to polyamide curing epoxy and has high impedance values. Microscopic inspection after te

Thirty five samples were collected from patients (1-30) years old, suffered from, infected skin , rushes, boils , oral thrush, anal & vaginal itches.  Candida albicans 57.3% (20 isolates) and Candida tropicalis 22.5% (8 isolates) Aspergillus  fumegatus 11.5% (4 isolates)   Aspergillus nigar 8.7%(3 isolates) , were isolated & identified from these samples.  Alcoholic & water hot extracts of the punica granatum (Pomegranate) peels as well as the dried powder were prepared.  The anti-fungal activity of the extracts was evaluated by means of the agar-well diffusion assay. The extract exhibited potent activity against yeast. The Minimum inhibitory concentra

This study aimed to explore and separate the phytochemicals of the whole plant Conyza canadensis, a naturally growing plant in Iraq, since no phytochemical research was done previously in Iraq. The whole plant of C. canadensis was defatted by maceration in hexane for 24 hours. The defatted plant materials were extracted using Soxhlet apparatus, the aqueous ethanol 85% as a solvent extraction for 9 hours, and fractionated by petroleum ether, chloroform, ethyl acetate, and n-butanol. The petroleum ether, chloroform, and ethyl acetate fractions were analyzed by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) for their steroids, alkaloids, and polyphenolic (phenolic acids and flavonoids) contents. One alkaloid was isolated from chloroform fractio

This study aims to document and describe the speech sounds and sound inventory that are present in Sorani which is dialect of Kurdish and compare the results with their English counterparts.  The research concentrates on the voicing system and the quality of Sorani sounds which are measured by using the voice onset time (VOT) of the stop consonants, and the first three formants of the vowel sounds; the closure duration of voiceless stop consonants in medial position is measured as well.

Ten native speakers of the Sorani dialect (5 males and 5 females) participated in this experiment. All speakers are between 20 and 50 years of age, were born in Sulaimanyiah, migrated to the US, and remain in the US at the time of recording.

A novel demountable shear connector is proposed to link a concrete slab to steel sections in a way that resulting steel-concrete composite floor is demountable, i.e. it can be easily dismantled at the end of its service life. The proposed connectors consist of two parts: the first part is a hollow steel tube with internal threads at its lower end. The second part is a compatible partially threaded bolted stud. After linking the stud to the steel section, the hollow steel tube can be fastened over the threaded stud, which create a complete demountable shear connector. The connector is suitable for use in both composite bridges and buildings, and using cast in-situ slabs, precast solid slabs, or hollow-core precast slabs. A series of push-off

A new spectrophotometric method for individual and simultaneous determination of cefixime and cephalexin depending on the first and second derivative mode techniques. The first and second derivative spectra of these compounds permitted individual and simultaneous determination of cefixime and cephalexin in concentration interval of (4– 24μg.ml-1 ) by measuring the amplitude of peak-to-base line, pea to peak at certain wavelengths and the area under peak at selected spectrum intervals. The methods showed reasonable precision and accuracy and have been applied to determine cefixime and cephalexin in two different pharmaceutical preparations.

Big data analysis has important applications in many areas such as sensor networks and connected healthcare. High volume and velocity of big data bring many challenges to data analysis. One possible solution is to summarize the data and provides a manageable data structure to hold a scalable summarization of data for efficient and effective analysis. This research extends our previous work on developing an effective technique to create, organize, access, and maintain summarization of big data and develops algorithms for Bayes classification and entropy discretization of large data sets using the multi-resolution data summarization structure. Bayes classification and data discretization play essential roles in many learning algorithms such a