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 After taking a full history from the women, 10 ml of blood was withdrawn from them, 2ml in EDTA tubes for lead estimation and 8 ml in plain tubes, centrifuged and the serum was used for magnesium, copper, calcium and zinc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 Karolinka earth-fill dam was constructed between 1977 and 1984 on the Stanovnice river above the town of Karolinka in the region of Vsetínsko in Czech Republic. Because of leakage on the downstream dam face due to technological indiscipline when filling dam layers during the dam construction stage, there were some steps to improve state dam safety. The final rehabilitation is to construct the diaphragm walls from self-hardening cement-bentonite suspension along the length of the dam. In addition to connecting the gallery and abutment (2 × 25 m long) by using jet piles. The article presents numerical modeling of safety factor evaluation associated with the state of the dam body and foundation; before, and after seal
... Show MoreReactive Powder Concrete (RPC) could be considered as the furthermost significant modern high compressive strength concrete. In this study, an experimental investigation on the impact of micro steel fiber volume fraction ratio and gamma ray irradiation duration influence upon the compressive strength of RPC is presented. Three volume fraction ratios (0.0, 1.0 and 1.5) % was implemented. For each percentage of the adopted fiber ratios, six different irradiation duration was considered; these are (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) days. Gamma source (Cs-137) of energy (0.662) MeV and activity (6) mci was used. In a case of zero volume fraction ratio, the experimental results showed that gamma ray had a significant influence on the reducing of the
... Show MoreCdS and CdTe thin films were thermally deposited onto glass substrate. The CdCl2 layer was deposited onto CdS surface. These followed by annealing for different duration times to modify the surface and interface of the junction. The diffraction patterns showed that the intensity of the peaks increased with the CdCl2/annealed treatment, and the grain sizes are increased after CdCl2/annealed treatment
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 MoreReactive Powder Concrete (RPC) could be considered as the furthermost significant modern high compressive strength concrete. In this study, an experimental investigation on the impact of micro steel fiber volume fraction ratio and gamma ray irradiation duration influence upon the compressive strength of RPC is presented. Three volume fraction ratios (0.0, 1.0 and 1.5) % was implemented. For each percentage of the adopted fiber ratios, six different irradiation duration was considered; these are (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) days. Gamma source (Cs-137) of energy (0.662) MeV and activity (6) mci was used. In a case of zero volume fraction ratio, the experimental results showed that gamma ray had a significant influence on the reducing of the
... Show MoreBackground: The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of three types of light curing devices QTH, LED and Flashmax on the surface microhardness of three types of bulkfill composite resins; Filtek Bulkfill posterior composite ( 3M), Tetric Evo Ceram ( Ivoclar Vivadent) and Sonicfill composite ( Kerr) Materials and methods: Total number of 90 samples was prepared, 30 samples for each type of bulkfill composite, were divided into three main groups, group A: Filtek posterior bulkfil (3M), group B: Tetric Evo Ceram (Ivoclar Vivadent) and group C: contain Sonicfill composite (kerr). Which then divided into three subgroups (n= 10) (1) Samples cured by QTH system (2) Samples cured by LED system and (3) samples cured by Flashmax system the
... Show MoreThis work consists of a numerical simulation to predict the velocity and temperature distributions, and an experimental work to visualize the air flow in a room model. The numerical work is based on non-isothermal, incompressible, three dimensional, k turbulence model, and solved using a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) approach, involving finite volume technique to solve continuity, momentum and energy equations, that governs the room’s turbulent flow domain. The experimental study was performed using (1/5) scaled room model of the actual dimensions of the room to simulate room air flow and visualize the flow pattern using smoke generated from burnt herbs and collected in a smoke generator to delivered through
... Show MorePoly vinyl alcohol has been studied for its ability to form crystallites by using annealing method. Semicrystalline films of poly vinyl alcohol (PVA) were prepared by casting 11.5 wt. % and 13 wt. % PVA aqueous solution onto glass slides at annealing temperature range 90 -120°C and duration time 15- 60 minute. This allowed the macromolecules to form crystallites, small regions of folded and compacted chains separated by amorphous regions where single PVA chain may pass through several of these crystallites. Degree of crystallinity of PVA films (hydrogels) was determined by method of density; on the other hand the swelling behavior was conducted by the determination of water uptake, wet degree of crystallinity, gel fraction and solubilit
... Show MoreThe civil engineering field currently focus on sustainable development. It is important to develop new sustainable and economic generations of concrete, using eco-friendly materials in the construction industry with a fair amount of costs and minimizing the impact upon the environment by reducing CO2 emissions from the cement industry as a whole while still obtaining high cement quality and strength. The main objective of this research is to clarify the mechanical behavior and ability to use Portland limestone cement in producing self compacted concrete, due to the beneficious effec of the limestone cement economically and enviromently. The research investigates the effect of using steel and polymer meshs as reinforcement, where the results
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