Background: Melatonin is the main hormone secreted by the pineal gland. This indole compound (N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine) is derived from serotonin after two biochemical steps. Melatonin has been implicated in some pharmacological effects including sedative/hypnotic, anticonvulsant activity and others. The aim of this study was to investigate the antinociceptive effect of different doses of melatonin administered i.p. to mice, and then, to find the dose- response line of melatonin in mice as analgesic agent.
Methods: The dose response effect of melatonin (10, 50, and 100mg/kg) were assessed against control using tail flick test in mice as a model of nociceptive pain. In this model, all doses of melatonin were given intraperitoneally 15 min before immersion of tail in hot water 50°C, and Tail Flick Latency was measured before, and after (15, 30, 60 and 120 min ) administration of melatonin.
Results: Administration of melatonin i.p. to mice significantly P ≤ 0.05 increase tail flick latency in melatonin treated groups after 30 min and 60 min compared to baseline values; while after 120 min, administration of melatonin produce significant and dose dependent antinociceptive effect following its i.p. administration. The percentage increase in tail flick latency produced by i.p. administration of melatonin doses of 10, 50, and 100 mg/kg were 86.59%, 156.05% and 169.19% respectively when compared to baseline values.
Conclusions: The present study showed that melatonin produces analgesic effect in a dose dependent manner in mice, further studies are required to know the exact mechanism by which melatonin exerts this analgesic effect.
(37)
(40)
This study aims to determine the reasons for the increase in the frequency of sand and dust storms in the Middle East and to identify their sources and mitigate them. A set of climatic data from 60 years (1960–2022) was analyzed. Sand storms in Iraq are a silty sand mature arkose composed of 72.7% sand, 25.1% silt, and 2.19% clay; the clay fraction in dust storms constitutes 70%, with a small amount of silt (20.6%) and sand (9.4%). Dust and sand storms (%) are composed of quartz (49.2, 67.1), feldspar (4.9, 20.9), calcite (38, 5), gypsum (4.8, 0.4), dolomite (0.8, 1.0), and heavy minerals (3.2, 6.6). Increasing temperatures in Iraq, by an average of 2 °C for sixty years, have contributed to an increase in the number of dust storm
... Show More
(45)
(11)
(10)
(5)
(3)
This study expands the state of the art in studies that assess torsional retrofit of reinforced concrete (RC) multi-cell box girders with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips. The torsional behavior of non-damaged and pre-damaged RC multi-cell box girder specimens externally retrofitted by CFRP strips was investigated through a series of laboratory experiments. It was found that retrofitting the pre-damaged specimens with CFRP strips increased the ultimate torsional capacity by more than 50% as compared to the un-damaged specimens subjected to equivalent retrofitting. This indicated that the retrofit has been less effective for the girder specimen that did not develop distortion beforehand as a result of pre-loading. From
... Show More
(6)
(5)
This study expands the state of the art in studies that assess torsional retrofit of reinforced concrete (RC) multi-cell box girders with carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) strips. The torsional behavior of non-damaged and pre-damaged RC multi-cell box girder specimens externally retrofitted by CFRP strips was investigated through a series of laboratory experiments. It was found that retrofitting the pre-damaged specimens with CFRP strips increased the ultimate torsional capacity by more than 50% as compared to the un-damaged specimens subjected to equivalent retrofitting. This indicated that the retrofit has been less effective for the girder specimen that did not develop distortion beforehand as a result of pre-loading. From
... Show More
(6)
(5)
Most companies use social media data for business. Sentiment analysis automatically gathers analyses and summarizes this type of data. Managing unstructured social media data is difficult. Noisy data is a challenge to sentiment analysis. Since over 50% of the sentiment analysis process is data pre-processing, processing big social media data is challenging too. If pre-processing is carried out correctly, data accuracy may improve. Also, sentiment analysis workflow is highly dependent. Because no pre-processing technique works well in all situations or with all data sources, choosing the most important ones is crucial. Prioritization is an excellent technique for choosing the most important ones. As one of many Multi-Criteria Decision Mak
... Show More
(2)
(4)
(2)
The goal of this investigation is to prepare zinc oxide (ZnO) nano-thin films by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique through Q-switching double frequency Nd:YAG laser (532 nm) wavelength, pulse frequency 6 Hz, and 300 mJ energy under vacuum conditions (10-3 torr) at room temperature. (ZnO) nano-thin films were deposited on glass substrates with different thickness of 300, 600 and 900 nm. ZnO films, were then annealed in air at a temperature of 500 °C for one hour. The results were compared with the researchers' previous theoretical study. The XRD analysis of ZnO nano-thin films indicated a hexagonal multi-crystalline wurtzite structure with preferential growth lines (100), (002), (101) for ZnO nano-thin films with different thi
... Show More
(4)
(1)
In this study, biodiesel was prepared from chicken fat via a transesterification reaction using Mussel shells as a catalyst. Pretreatment of chicken fat was carried out using non‐catalytic esterification to reduce the free fatty acid content from 36.28 to 0.96 mg KOH/g oil using an ethanol/ fat mole ratio equal to 115:1. In the transesterification reaction, the studied variables were methanol: oil mole ratio in the range of (6:1 ‐ 30:1), catalyst loading in the range of (9‐15) wt%, reaction temperature (55‐75 °C), and reaction time (1‐7) h. The heterogeneous alkaline catalyst was greenly synthesized from waste mussel shells throughout a calcin
... Show More
(6)
(4)