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
Automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) used for many applications especially in security applications, including border control. However, more accurate and language-independent techniques are still needed. This work provides a new approach to identifying Arabic license plates in different formats, colors, and even including English characters. Numbers, characters, and layouts with either 1-line or 2-line layouts are presented. For the test, we intend to use Iraqi license plates as there is a wide range of license plate styles written in Arabic, Kurdish, and English/Arabic languages, each different in style and color. This variety makes it difficult for recent traditional license plate recognition systems and algorithms to recogn
... Show MoreThe present paper sheds light on irony as one of the most important and most common linguistic phenomena in modern linguistics, in general ,and in discourse in particular, whether it is (political, literary, journalistic, etc.). When irony is used correctly or positively, it paves the way for the speaker to gain the approval of other parties participating in the dialogue and dissolve barriers between them. It is a simple multi-functional linguistic style and an expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite according to the context and the situation. Therefore, it is necessary to study its characteristics, define its functions and traces the extent of
... Show MoreTo assess the total hip replacement patients’ knowledge of home – care regarding pain management, medication therapy, wound care, mobility limitation and complications may occur in the post hip replacement surgery, and to assess relationship between some variables such as, age level of education, sex & marital status with home- care knowledge. A descriptive study was used to assess the hip-replacement patient home-knowledge, a purposive sampling of (60) hip-replaced –patients were selected from Gazy Alhariri Hospital (central of surgical profession ) and Alwasity Hospital ( plastic surgery) , the questionnaire obtains two parts , part one, which included socio-demographical characteristics of the samp
... Show MoreThe nuclear ground-state structure of some Nickel (58-66Ni) isotopes has been investigated within the framework of the mean field approach using the self-consist Hartree-Fock calculations (HF) including the effective interactions of Skyrme. The Skyrme parameterizations SKM, SKM*, SI, SIII, SKO, SKE, SLY4, SKxs15, SKxs20 and SKxs25 have been utilized with HF method to study the nuclear ground state charge, mass, neutron and proton densities with the corresponding root mean square radii, charge form factors, binding energies and neutron skin thickness. The deduced results led to specifying one set or more of Skyrme parameterizations that used to achieve the best agreement with the available experimental
... Show MoreAstronomy image is regarded main source of information to discover outer space, therefore to know the basic contain for galaxy (Milky way), it was classified using Variable Precision Rough Sets technique to determine the different region within galaxy according different color in the image. From classified image we can determined the percentage for each class and then what is the percentage mean. In this technique a good classified image result and faster time required to done the classification process.
The research problem is that the traditional methods of internal auditing are somewhat heavy with long and rigid procedures for the members of the audit process team, especially in light of the current developments that are reflected in the business environment and internal audit reports, so it is necessary to reconsider the traditional internal audit work method and assess the extent of its development by agile methods to reduce the time of the audit process on the activities and elements that add value and direct the effort and time to the activities and elements that add value to the work of the economic unit and the report of the internal auditor.
The research aims to study the possibility of applying agile internal auditing
... Show MoreLinked to the post-modern historical transformations sociological which raided the developed Western societies since the middle of last century, which consisted mainly in the emergence of what he called Alsosiologion (consumer society a) and (Affluent Society), as it appeared the new social lifestyle is not only characterized by the provision of the accumulation of capital and sparingly in spending, but rather a kind of extravagance and encourage consumption, prompting some to say that consumption is a community postmodern engine, and other labels for this period of economic backgrounds, such as the new capitalism and the system of the new capitalist Alseperntiqi technical and labels purist such as industrial post-society emerged, some a
... Show MoreIn this survey, there are 14 species belonging to 14 genera, nine families and two orders, collected on Macrofungi from Tikrit city, Salahadin Governorate, North Central of Iraq. The members of Coleoptera were more abundant than flies on Macrofungi.
The family of Ciidae and Leiodidae (Order, Coleoptera), Mycetophilidae (Order, Diptera), and 6 species are recorded for the first time for insect fauna of Iraq.