Background: Decreased taste acuity to the four basic tastes is closely related to health problems (diseases & medications), aging, and smoking. This study aimed to determine taste detection and recognition thresholds to the four basic tastes in some physiological and pathological conditions, determine saliva flow rate, serum and saliva zinc levels in these groups.
Objective and Methods: The study includes 218 individuals (35–80) years old divided into six groups; the control, aging (subjects over 60 years), smokers, diabetics, haemodialysis patients and hypertensive patients on chronic use of captopril.The taste detection and recognition thresholds of sweet, salty, sour and bitter tastes, saliva flo

The study aims mainly to evaluate the performance of Sharq Dijila water treatment plant in removing turbidity for the period of 1-4-2001 to 31-3-2004. Daily data for turbidity of raw, clarified, filtered, and supplied water were analyzed. The results of the study showed that there is a wide variation in turbidity levels of raw water fluctuating between 10-1000 NTU with mean value of 41.3 NTU. Turbidity values of the clarified water varied between 1.4-77 NTU. Based on the turbidity value of 10 NTU and 20 NTU (the design maximum turbidity) the readings gave an acceptable percentage of 32.4% and 86% respectively. The turbidity of filtered water ranged between 0.2-4.5 NTU which are completely in compliance with Iraqi and WHO standards. In ac

Permanent magnets of different intensities were used to investigate the effect of a magnetic field in the process of preventing deposits of calcium carbonate. The magnets were fixed on the water line from the tap outside. Then heating a sample of this water in flasks and measuring the amount of sediment in a manner weighted differences. These experiments comprise to the change of the velocity of water flow, which amounted to (0.5, 0.75, 1) m/sec through the magnetic fields that are of magnetic strength (2200, 6000, 9250, 11000) Gauss, and conduct measurements, tests and compare them with those obtained from the use of ordinary water.The results showed the effectiveness of magnetic treatment in reducing the rate of deposition of calcium carb

           Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO₂ NPs) are generally used in different types of applications such as the industry of plastics, paper industry, paints, toothpaste, cosmetics, sunscreens, and in various lifestyles, because of the vast range of applications and our daily exposure to these nanoparticles and a lack of information on animal and human health this study was designed to reveal dose and time-dependent effects of TiO₂-NPs on the thyroid gland and kidney functions in male rats.

For this study 54, Sprague-Dawley albino adult male rats were classified into three main groups each of 18 rats treated for a particular duration (1,2, and 4) weeks respectively. Each group was subdivided i

In this study, the effect of ceramic coating on the performance and gases emission on diesel engine was investigated. A four-stroke, direct injected, single cylinder, diesel engine was tested at constant speed and at different load conditions without coating. Then, the inlet and exhaust valves faces were coated by about 500µm with ceramic materials. Ceramic layers were made of YttriaStabilized Zirconia (YSZ), and NiCrAl as a bond coat. The coating technique adapted in this work is the flame spray method. The engine with valves ceramiccoated research was tested for the same operation conditions of the engine (without coating). The results indicate a reduction in both fuel consumption by about 7.6% and particulate emissions by about (13

An experimental work has been conducted on wall attachment fluidics amplifiers, one of them to study the effect of output pressure or load on the amplifier performance. The output load has been simulated as a piston connected to the device output and the piston can be loaded accordingly. The results shows that the output volume flow rate increases as the supply pressure increases under different load and the output pressure remains constant as the supply pressure increases under constant load.

      An experimental and computational study is conducted to analyze the thermal performance of heat sinks and to pick up more profound information in this imperative field in the electronic cooling. One important approach to improve the heat transfer on the air-side of the heat exchanger is to adjust the fin geometry. Experiments are conducted to explore the impact of the changing of diverse operational and geometrical parameters on the heat sink thermal
performance. The working fluid used is air. Operational parameters includes: air Reynolds number (from 23597 to 3848.9) and heat flux (from 3954 to 38357 W/m
2 ). Conformational parameters includes: change the direction of air flow and the area of conduct