Background: Dietary intakes are critical during pregnancy, because inadequate amounts of key nutrients may compromise fetal development or maternal health. In addition to that maternal diet could be one of the methods to select the gender of the baby. The aim of the study is to correlate the level of the minerals in the mother’s blood with the gender and wellbeing of the baby after delivery.Patients and Methods: Fifty women were involved in this study with a mean age (23.92 ± 4.75), collected from the labor room during labor in the period between December 2013 and May 2014, in Baghdad teaching hospital. After taking a full history from the women, 10 ml of blood was withdrawn from them, 2ml in EDTA tubes for lead estimation and 8 ml in plain tubes, centrifuged and the serum was used for magnesium, copper, calcium and zinc estimation. The estimation was done by spectrophotometer method.Results: Birth weight of the delivered babies was correlated negatively but not significantly to the age of the delivered women. The level of the minerals in the maternal blood was not different between those who delivered male or female babies except for the zinc level which was higher in those women who give birth to male babies. The correlation between the birth weight of the babies and the level of maternal minerals shows a not significant positive correlation between them except for zinc which was significant and the lead level was correlated negatively but not significantly with birth weight.Conclusions: Age seems to have no significant effect on birth weight. There is no significant effect of the minerals level on the selection of the baby’s gender except for zinc which is higher in women with male babies, in addition to its significant effect on the birth weight being higher in women with higher birth weight babies.
The purpose of this study is designate quenching and tempering heat treatment by using Taguchi technique to determine optimal factors of heat treatment (austenitizing temperature, percentage of nanoparticles, type of base media, nanoparticles type and soaking time) for increasing hardness, wear rate and impact energy properties of 420 martensitic stainless steel. An (L18) orthogonal array was chosen for the design of experiment. The optimum process parameters were determined by using signal-to-noise ratio (larger is better) criterion for hardness and impact energy while (Smaller is better) criterion was for the wear rate. The importance levels of process parameters that effect on hardness, wear rate and impact energy propertie
... Show MoreIn this work, a ceramic model has obtained from Iraqi bentonite as a base material with limited additions of alumina and silica. The selected material can bear temperatures higher than the bearing temperature of bentonite as it achieved tolerance temperatures (1300°C) based on X-ray diffraction patterns. It was found that the addition of alumina and silica led to the occurrence of basic phases such as mullite, quartz, cordierite and feldspar in percentages that depended on the percentage of addition in the mixture and the firing temperature, which was (1000-1300)°C.
This study has been conducted to examin the effect of sodium propionate at different level of 0.03,0.06,0.10% on the number of bacteria and mold and to extend the storage life of laboratory processed biscuit. The results indicated that the use of 0.10% sodium propionate prolonged the storage peroid until the third month, while the use of 0.20% sodium propionate showed no growth of bacteria up to six month of storage, three types of bacteria has been isolated from processed biscuit, namely, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus cereus, Esherichia coli. using 0.10% sodium propionate showed no growth of mold up to three month of storage ,while using of 0.15 % and 0.20% sodium propionate prevent the growth
... Show MoreRoller-Compacted Concrete (RCC) is a zero-slump concrete, with no forms, no reinforcing steel, no finishing and is wet enough to support compaction by vibratory rollers. Because the effectiveness of curing on properties and durability, the primary scope of this research is to study the effect of various curing methods (air curing, emulsified asphalt(flan coat) curing, 7 days water curing and permanent water curing) and different porcelanite (local material used as an Internal Curing agent) replacement percentages (volumetric replacement) of fine aggregate on some properties of RCC and to explore the possibility of introducing more practical RCC for road pavement with minimum requirement of curing. Cubes specimens were sawed from the slab
... Show MoreIn this work, the effect of partial amounts of gases in gas mixture of a CW CO2 laser on the output power was investigated. Also their effect on the condition determining the glow-discharge self-sustaining required for pumping the active medium was studied. Two fit relations were derived to predict the output laser power and the electric field to unit pressure ratio as functions to the partial amounts of gases. Results presented in this work could be used fruitfully to determine some of the optimum operational conditions of glow-discharge low-power CW CO2 lasers.
An isolate of Leishmania major was grown on the semisolid medium and incubated at 26ºC. The isolate was irradiated by He: Ne laser (632.8 nm, 10 mW) at exposure times (5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30) minutes in their respective order. The unirradiated groups represent control group. Growth rate and percentage of viability were examined during six days after irradiation. The change in these two parameters reflects the effect of irradiation on the parasite. The results refers that the general growth effected by irradiation in comparison with un irradiation group, The growth rate of parasite decrease with increasing the exposure time in comparison with control group. Parasite viability decrease with irradiation and the percentage of living cell dec
... Show MoreInSb alloy was prepared then InSb:Bi films have been prepared successfully by thermal evaporation technique on glass substrate at Ts=423K. The variation of activation energies(Ea1,Ea2)of d.c conductivity with annealing temperature (303, 373, 423, 473, 523 and 573)K were measured, it is found that its values increases with increasing annealing temperature. To show the type of the films, the Hall and thermoelectric power were measured. The activation energy of the thermoelectric power is much smaller than for d.c conductivity and increases with increasing annealing temperature .The mobility and carrier concentration has been measured also.