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
In this paper the effect of thermal annealing on the structural and optical properties of Antimony Selenide (Sb2Se3) is investigated. Sb2Se3 powder is evaporated on clean amorphous glass substrates at room temperature under high vacuum pressure (4.5×10-6 mbar) to form thin films. The structural investigation was done with the aid of X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The amorphous to polycrystalline transformation of these thin films was shown by X-ray diffraction analysis after thermal annealing. These films' morphology is explained. (UV-Vis ) spectra in ranges from 300 to 1100 nm was used to examine the optical properties of the films .The absorption coefficient and optical energy gap of the investigated films are
... Show MoreBackground: This in vitro study evaluated the effect of canal dryness and flaring on the accuracy of two electronic apex locators for working length (WL) determination. Materials and methods: Sixty extracted teeth were used, after access opening was done, the occlusal surface was flattened to create stable reference point. The teeth were randomly divided into two equal main groups of flared and unflared group each one of 30 teeth. The flaring was done with Gates Glidden drills. The two main groups were further subdivided into two subgroups: dry canal and wet canal using 5.25% sodium hypochlorite groups, Electronic WL of each sample was determined using both Root ZX and i-Root apex locator. Consequently, histologic WL was determined by shav
... Show MoreThe toxicity of insecticide dichlorvos (90%) was tested in ovaries of mosquito fish using three sublethal concentrations (0.3, 0.6, 0.8 µg/L) and studied their effects on the means of body and ovary weights, gonadosomatic index, ovum size and ova number. Results showed that there was a significant (P<0.05) decrease in body and ovary weights, ovum size and ova count. However, there was no significant (P<0.05) difference in gonadosomatic index in treated groups with the three concentrations of dichlorvos compared with the control group. This study was added evidence on the ovular toxicity of dichlorvos concerning its effect on fish production as well as reduction in the means of productive offspring and their survival.
This study was aimed to reduce the amount of the sprayed solution lost during trees spraying. At the same time, the concentration of the sprayed solution on the target (tree or bush) must be ensured and to find the best combination of treatments. Two factors controls the spraying process: (i) spraying speed (1.2 km/h, 2.4 km/h, 3.6 km/h), and (ii) the type of sensor. The test results showed a significant loss reduction percentage. It reached (6.05%, 5.39% and 2.05%) at the speed (1.2 km/h, 2.4 km/h, 3.6 km/h), respectively. It was noticed that when the speed becomes higher the loss becomes less accordingly. The interaction between the 3.6 km/h speed and the type of Ultrasonic sensor led to a decrease in the percentage of the spray
... Show MoreInferential methods of statistical distributions have reached a high level of interest in recent years. However, in real life, data can follow more than one distribution, and then mixture models must be fitted to such data. One of which is a finite mixture of Rayleigh distribution that is widely used in modelling lifetime data in many fields, such as medicine, agriculture and engineering. In this paper, we proposed a new Bayesian frameworks by assuming conjugate priors for the square of the component parameters. We used this prior distribution in the classical Bayesian, Metropolis-hasting (MH) and Gibbs sampler methods. The performance of these techniques were assessed by conducting data which was generated from two and three-component mixt
... Show MoreCopper tin sulfide (Cu2SnS3) thin films have been grown on glass
substrate with different thicknesses (500, 750 and 1000) nm by flash
thermal evaporation method after prepare its alloy from their
elements with high purity. The as-deposited films were annealed at
473 K for 1h. Compositional analysis was done using Energy
dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The microstructure of CTS powder
examined by SEM and found that the large crystal grains are shown
clearly in images. XRD investigation revealed that the alloy was
polycrystalline nature and has cubic structure with preferred
orientation along (111) plane, while as deposited films of different
thickness have amorphous structure and converted to polycrystalline
As long as the place in which a person lives has a meaning and temporal dimensions , memory is the main axis of these dimensions , today , city centers and old historical sectors of cities are abandoned , and began to turn into slums , the contradiction between old and historical sectors led cities to lose their identity while people lost their sense of belongingness to the old sectors where their ancestors used to live . The old city of Hilla used to have social , historical and cultural role on determining the identity . The study problem can be summarized as the ( lack of studies regarding the impact of historical memory related to Hilla old city on social and cultural mobility ) , the study hypothesis claims that the social , histori
... Show MoreThe experiment was conducted under shading (with the aid of Saran) condition on a nursery managed by the Baghdad Mayoralty during the season of 2014-2015 to study the effect of composed sheep manure extract on the growth and leaf nutrients content of tomato seedlings var. Wijdan. The experiment was composed of 6 treatments included the extract of sheep manure by hot (425C)and lmbient(205C) temperature water .The extract was diluted to the half by water and foliar applied to seedlings (multible application) or to the soil . Treatments also included the application of NPK chemical fertilizers as recommended and a control treatment through applying distilled water as foliar .The experiment was designed according to the randomized compl
... Show MoreInfluence of metal nanoparticles synthesized by microorganisms upon soil-borne microscopic fungus Aspergillus terreus K-8 was studied. It was established that the metal nanoparticles synthesized by microorganisms affect the enzymatic activity of the studied culture. Silver nanoparticles lead to a decrease in cellulase activity and completely suppress the amylase activity of the fungus, while copper nanoparticles completely inhibit the activity of both the cellulase complex and amylase. The obtained results imply that the large-scale use of silver and copper nanoparticles may disrupt biological processes in the soil and cause change in the physiological and biochemical state of soil-borne microorganisms as well.
Thin films samples of Bismuth sulfide Bi2S3 had deposited on
glass substrate using thermal evaporation method by chemical
method under vacuum of 10-5 Toor. XRD and AFM were used to
check the structure and morphology of the Bi2S3 thin films. The
results showed that the films with law thickness <700 nm were free
from any diffraction peaks refer to amorphous structure while films
with thickness≥700 nm was polycrystalline. The roughness decreases
while average grain size increases with the increase of thickness. The
A.C conductivity as function of frequency had studied in the
frequency range (50 to 5x106 Hz). The dielectric constant,
polarizability showed significant dependence upon the variation of
thic