Background: Chronic cigarette smoking is one of the major risk factors for coronary artery disease. However, it has additional cardiac adverse effects independent of coronary atherosclerosis. Patient and Methods: After informed consent and perm- ission from the review board of the hospital, 80 healthy subjects who were classified as smokers or non-smokers were included in the study. They were examined by standard echocardiography protocol which was followed by two-dimensional speckle tracking to assess the functions of the right ventricle. Results: The tricuspid annular plane systolic excursion (TAPSE) was significantly reduced in smokers as compared to non-smokers (P < 0.05). The tricuspid flow peak late diastolic velocity (A wave) was sig

In fish, a complex set of mechanisms deal with environmental stresses including hypoxia. In order to probe the hypothesis that hypoxia-induced stress could be manifested in varieties of pathways, a model species, mirror carp (Cyprinus carpio), were chronically exposed to hypoxic condition (dissolved oxygen level: 1.80±0.6mg/l) for 21 days and subsequently allowed to recover under normoxic condition (dissolved oxygen level: 8.2±0.5mg/l) for 7 days. At the end of these exposure periods, an integrated approach was applied to evaluate several endpoints at different levels of biological organisation. These included determination of (i) oxidative damage to DNA in erythrocytes (using modified comet assay), (ii) lipid peroxidation in liver sample

the shear strength parameters of the treated and untreated gypsum soil under the effect of four soaking and drying cycles has studied in this paper, moreover examined the effect of wetting and drying cycles on the collapse potential of the soil and comparing between the behavior of the treated and untreated gypsum soil under the effect of the two conditions. Gypsum soil sample brought from Sawa lake in Al Muthana governorate with the content of gypsum 65.5%, the polyurethane polymer (PP) was used with different percentages 3, 6, and 10% to enhance the mechanical properties of gypsum soil, model was prepared to achieve four soaking and drying cycle to the samples before testing, this model consists of an Aluminum plate base with dimensions 7

This study was conducted at the poultry farm of the Department of Animal Production/College of Agriculture/University of Baghdad/Abu Ghraib, on 252 birds (180 females and 72 males). This study aims to observe the effect of melatonin implantation and exposure to different light colors and their interaction on characteristics of fertility and hatching of local Iraqi chickens. The birds were divided into three sections (white, red and green) each section contains two lines, one of which has been planted melatonin under the skin of the neck of birds and the other has not been planted hormones. The results showed that melatonin implantation and exposure to different light colors did not significantly affect the hatching rate of fertilized eggs a

This research had been conducted to investigate response of two Antirrhinum majus L. varieties, tall and dwarf variety to foliar application of Indole 3-acetic acid and Benzyladenin at (0, 60, 120, 180, 240 ppm), through plant height, fresh weight, dry weight of shoot, length of inflorescence (raceme), number of flowering buds per raceme and chlorophyll content in leaves at complete flowering stage.

Results of treatment of the tall variety with IAA and BA showed that IAA had the highest significant increase in plant height, while BA had the highest significant increase in chlorophyll content .Increasing concentrations of both IAA and BA resulted a significant increase in all growth parameters, this was obvious in floweri

The primary purpose of the present research was to study the effect of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) powder content on ultrasonic wave velocity in PVC/Epoxy composites. The second part is concerned with the relations of dynamic elastic moduli with the ultrasonic wave velocities, to determine how ultrasonic waves can affect them.
Experimental data have been obtained using the sonic viewer (model -5217 A) device to generate two types of waves, longitudinal waves of frequency 63 kHz and transverse waves of frequency 33 kHz and to measure the transit time required for those waves to travel through individual sample.
The experimental results have shown that the propagation of the ultrasonic velocity increases directly with PVC content in the