Background: The discriminative power of the classical WHO parameters in relation to male fertility is quite low, because they only address few aspects of sperm quality and function. This has led investigators to focus their attention on the male gamete and in particular its genome.Objective: To explore which of the sperm DNA damage parameters measured by comet assay are more reliable, and their relations with the standard semen parameters.Methods: Study was done on 40 infertile men selected from couples attending the Institute of Embryo Reasearch and Infertility Treatment at Al-Kadhimiya City/ Baghdad in the period between February 2009 and May 2009, with a history of infertility of ≥1 years; and 15 healthy volunteers of proven fertility serving as control. Samples were allowed to liquefy for at least 30 minutes at 37°C and then evaluated according to the guidelines of the World Health Organization, 1999. The single cell gel electrophoresis (comet) assay was studied in the ejaculated spermatozoa. The exclusion criteria were the presence of azoospermia and severe oligospermia. Results were compared with the standard semen characteristics (concentration, motility and morphology).Results: Compared to healthy volunteers, infertile patients had highly significantly higher values of comet parameters (P = 0.00001). In all infertile patients, comet extent did not correlate with any of the classical semen parameters; whereas, tail length (μm), % DNA in tail, tail moment and olive moment had all significant negative correlations with the standard parameters. Significant positive correlations were observed between the studied comet parameters, except for the comet extent which was not significantly correlated with tail length and % DNA in tail (P = 0.06, P = 0.7; respectively).Conclusion: Comet assay is a very useful technique in assessing sperm DNA damage. Comet tail parameters and comet extent, may clarify different aspects of DNA damage, and together give a better insight to the integrity of the male genome.Keywards: sperm, comet extent, % DNA in tail, tail moment and olive moment
The bandwidth requirements of telecommunication network users increased rapidly during the last decades. Optical access technologies must provide the bandwidth demand for each user. The passive optical access networks (PONs) support a maximum data rate of 100 Gbps by using the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technique in the optical access network. In this paper, the optical broadband access networks with many techniques from Time Division Multiplexing Passive Optical Networks (TDM PON) to Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex Passive Optical Networks (OFDM PON) are presented. The architectures, advantages, disadvantages, and main parameters of these optical access networks are discussed and reported which have many ad
... Show MoreDue to the impact of industrial companies on the ransformations and developments witnessed by the world in general nd Iraq in particular, especially in the industrial and economic Jonrnal spects, the liberalization of internal and external trade, and the idoption of the open market policy in Iraq, which led to the intensification of competition between industrial companies and heir products and services, and the increase and diversity of the Onumber of alternatives Available to the public on the one hand, and he diversity and change of their desires and needs on the other hand, which was reflected in the reality of those companies and heir products or services, especially in light of the great challenges facing companies and the deteriorat
... Show MoreLong memory analysis is one of the most active areas in econometrics and time series where various methods have been introduced to identify and estimate the long memory parameter in partially integrated time series. One of the most common models used to represent time series that have a long memory is the ARFIMA (Auto Regressive Fractional Integration Moving Average Model) which diffs are a fractional number called the fractional parameter. To analyze and determine the ARFIMA model, the fractal parameter must be estimated. There are many methods for fractional parameter estimation. In this research, the estimation methods were divided into indirect methods, where the Hurst parameter is estimated fir
... Show MoreRoller compacted concrete (RCC) is a concrete of no slump, no reinforcement, no finishing, and compacted using vibratory roller. When compared with conventional concrete, it contains less water content
when compared to traditional concrete. The RCC technique achieves significant time and cost savings during the construction of concrete. This study demonstrates the preparation of RCC slab of (38 ×38× 10) cm
samples by using roller compactor which is manufactured in local markets. The Hydrated lime additive is used to study the mechanical and physical properties of that RCC slab samples. This investigation is divided
into two main stages: The First stage consists of hammer compaction method with two gradation of aggregate, dense
The theoretical analysis depends on the Classical Laminated Plate Theory (CLPT) that is based on the Von-K ráman Theory and Kirchhov Hypothesis in the deflection analysis during elastic limit as well as the Hooke's laws of calculation the stresses. New function for boundary condition is used to solve the forth degree of differential equations which depends on variety sources of advanced engineering mathematics. The behavior of composite laminated plates, symmetric and anti-symmetric of cross-ply angle, under out-of-plane loads (uniform distributed loads) with two different boundary conditions are investigated to obtain the central deflection for mid-plane by using the Ritz method. The computer programs is built using Ma
... Show MoreTwisted tape insertion in smooth plain tube is one of types of passive methods that is used to enhance heat transfer. Swirl fluid flow inside tube and related heat transfer characteristics are very complex. ANSYS FLUENT (V 16.1) and ASPEN industrial program are used in analyzing this technique for enhancement heat transfer. A circular plain tube has length L=8534mm and 17 mm inner diameter with twisted tape has twist ratio of y = (H/D) = (150/17) =8.8 along with a plain tube were considered for this study. Eight Reynolds numbers (Re) of 784, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000 and 7000 are used to analyze the response of thermal performance. Crude oil API 28 exit temperature, film heat transfer coefficient, Nusselt number
... Show MoreAbstract
This study aims to identify the reality of using electronic applications in teaching language skills to people with mild intellectual disabilities from the mothers’ perspective. A descriptive approach was used. The electronic questionnaires were administered to the study sample, 122 responses were received from mothers of the students with mild intellectual disability in Hafer Al-Baten schools. The response average rate was 94%. The results showed that there are statistically significant differences that are related to the variant of monthly income as for the barriers to using electronic applications in such schools, whereas there were no differences regarding the variant of monthly income regarding t
... Show MoreIn this paper, we generalized the principle of Banach contractive to the relative formula and then used this formula to prove that the set valued mapping has a fixed point in a complete partial metric space. We also showed that the set-valued mapping can have a fixed point in a complete partial metric space without satisfying the contraction condition. Additionally, we justified an example for our proof.
Automated medical diagnosis is an important topic, especially in detection and classification of diseases. Malaria is one of the most widespread diseases, with more than 200 million cases, according to the 2016 WHO report. Malaria is usually diagnosed using thin and thick blood smears under a microscope. However, proper diagnosis is difficult, especially in poor countries where the disease is most widespread. Therefore, automatic diagnostics helps in identifying the disease through images of red blood cells, with the use of machine learning techniques and digital image processing. This paper presents an accurate model using a Deep Convolutional Neural Network build from scratch. The paper also proposed three CNN
... Show MoreTwisted tape insertion in the smooth plain tube is one of the types of passive methods that are used to enhance heat transfer. Swirl fluid flow inside the tube and related heat transfer characteristics are very complex. ANSYS FLUENT (V 16.1) and ASPEN industrial program are used in analyzing this technique for enhancement heat transfer. A circular plain tube has length L=8534mm and 17 mm inner diameter with a twisted tape of twist ratio of y = (H/D) = (150/17) =8.8 along the plain tube were considered for this study. Eight Reynolds numbers (Re) of 784, 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000, 5000, 6000 and 7000 are used to analyze the response of thermal performance. Crude oil API 28 exit temperature, film heat transfer coefficient, Nus
... Show More