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
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In this paper, a compact multiband printed dipole antenna is presented as a candidate for use in wireless communication applications. The proposed fractal antenna design is based on the second level tent transformation. The space-filling property of this fractal geometry permits producing longer lengths in a more compact size. Theoretical performance of this antenna has been calculated using the commercially available software IE3D from Zeland Software Inc. This electromagnetic simulator is based on the method of moments (MoM). The proposed dipole antenna has been found to possess a considerable size reduction compared with the conventional printed or wire dipole antenna designed at the same design frequency and using the same substrate
... Show MoreThis study is unique in this field. It represents a mix of three branches of technology: photometry, spectroscopy, and image processing. The work treats the image by treating each pixel in the image based on its color, where the color means a specific wavelength on the RGB line; therefore, any image will have many wavelengths from all its pixels. The results of the study are specific and identify the elements on the nucleus’s surface of a comet, not only the details but also their mapping on the nucleus. The work considered 12 elements in two comets (Temple 1 and 67P/Churyumoy-Gerasimenko). The elements have strong emission lines in the visible range, which were recognized by our MATLAB program in the treatment of the image. The percen
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Social media is known as detectors platform that are used to measure the activities of the users in the real world. However, the huge and unfiltered feed of messages posted on social media trigger social warnings, particularly when these messages contain hate speech towards specific individual or community. The negative effect of these messages on individuals or the society at large is of great concern to governments and non-governmental organizations. Word clouds provide a simple and efficient means of visually transferring the most common words from text documents. This research aims to develop a word cloud model based on hateful words on online social media environment such as Google News. Several steps are involved including data acq
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Urban agriculture is one of the important urban uses of land in cities since the inception of cities and civilizations, but the great expansion of cities in the world during the twentieth century and the beginning of the twentieth century and the increase in the number of urban residents compared to the rural population has led to a decline in this use in favor of other uses.
This decline in agricultural and green land areas in cities has negatively affected the environment, natural life and biological diversity in cities in addition to the great impact on the climate and the increase in temperatures and the negative impact on the economic side, since urban agriculture is an important pillar of the economy, especially
... Show MoreThe study was conducted at research station A, department of field crops, college of agricultural engineering sciences, university of Baghdad during summer 2021 to evaluate the effect of boron and some growth regulators on some growth criteria and yield of soybean crop (cv. shimaa). The experiment was carried out according to split plots by using randomized complete block design with three replications. The main plots included three concentrations of boron (75, 150 and 225) mg.L-1, the sub-plots included three levels of growth regulators, spraying kinetin (100 mg. L-1), spraying ethrel (200 mg.L-1) and spraying kinetin (100 mg.L-1) + spraying ethrel (200 mg.L-1) as
... Show MoreThe purpose of this research is to identify the youth issues in Talk Shows in the Iraqi satellite channels via monitoring a sample of episodes of the Talk Shows episodes which are concerned and analyzed the youth issues in the Iraqi satellite channels, namely, «Hala Shabab Program» at Al-Iraqia satellite Channel and «Shabab wa Banat Program» at Al-Sumaria satellite Channel by recording and re-watching them again. This research is classified as one of descriptive researches. The survey method was adopted in this study.
For this purpose, the researcher prepared an analysis form. The researcher de
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The research represents an applied study to the urban scene of Baghdad city center within the area of (Al Bab Al Sharqi – Al Tahrir Square) through studying and identifying the levels of the reciprocal correlation of advertising signs impact on urban scene , then finding out the indicators and potential values which have made advertising signs as positive value by achieving the mechanisms of visual quality or a negative value by achieving mechanisms of visual pollution. And then examining the resulted visual perception defect reforming mechanism from it and identify the basic elements represented of the laws and legislation known worldwide. When presenting the problem, The research depends on: (Lack of clear perception
... Show MoreIn this paper, the relationship between urban growth, land use, site availability, and impacts on the general appearance of the city generated by functional characteristics of port cities were analyzed. Various data were used to identify patterns of land use change and city growth and expansion. The research aims to analyze the impact of the port on the growth of the city, study the urban growth of the city of Umm Qasr and predicting the growth trends, and to identify the most influential factors in this growth. The study dealt with the concepts of urban growth and the factors that characterize the growth of port cities and the current situation of the city. The practical part included the mechanisms used by the researcher to analyze the
... Show MoreABSTRACT Background:Hydrogen absorption and related degradation in the mechanical properties of Ni-Ti based orthodontic wires has been demonstrated following exposure to fluoride prophylactic agents. This study was designed to investigate the effects of three fluoride containing agents on the load deflection characteristics of heat activated nickel titanium arch wires during unloading phase. Material and method: Eighty specimens of heat activated nickel titanium arch wires were obtained from Ortho Technology Company, half of which had a 0.016 inch round and 0.019x0.025 rectangular. Ten specimens from both wire size were immersed in one of the tested fluoride prophylactic agents (neutral sodium fluoride gel, stannous fluoride gel or phos-flu
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