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
Background: Acute myocardial infarction
(AMI) is one of the most common diagnoses
in hospitalized patients. The stimulus that
initiates the acute inflammatory process in AMI
has not been identified. Conventional risk
factors account only for approximately half of
the patients with clinically apparent
atherosclerosis which can leads to AMI.
Recently a potential link between infectious
agents and atherosclerosis has been suggested
Objective: To find a possible association
between Helicobacter pylori (H. Pylori)
infection and AMI.
Method: We studied the prevalence of antiH. pylori antibodies in 94 patients who were
admitted with the diagnosis of AMI and a
similar number of healthy individuals w
Cilnidipine is a dihydropyridine class of calcium channel blockers, it is classified as a BCS class II drug, characterized by a low oral bioavailability of 13%. Consequently, the utilization of nanoparticle preparation is anticipated to enhance its bioavailability. The objective of the research is to integrate cilnidipine nanoparticles into oral films as a means of enhancing patient adherence. The optimal polymers for producing Cilnidipine films were PVA cold and or HPMC E5 at different concentrations using a casting technique with glycerol as a plasticizer. The Nano suspension-based preparation of Cilnidipine's oral film containing the combination of polymers exhibited a significant enhancement in vitro dissolution, with a percentage excee
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Variable-Length Subnet Masks (VLSM), often referred to as "subnetting a subnet", is used to maximize addressing efficiency. The network administrator is able to use a long mask on networks with few hosts, and a short mask on subnets with many hosts. This addressing scheme allows growth and does not involve wasting addresses. VLSM gives a way of subnetting a network with
minimal loses of IP addresses for a specific range. Unfortunately, the network administrator has to perform several mathematical steps (or use charts) to get the required results from VLSM. In this paper, a simple graph simulator is proposed (using Visual Basic 6.0 Language) to perform all the required mathematical steps and to display the obtained required informatio
Many image processing and machine learning applications require sufficient image feature selection and representation. This can be achieved by imitating human ability to process visual information. One such ability is that human eyes are much more sensitive to changes in the intensity (luminance) than the color information. In this paper, we present how to exploit luminance information, organized in a pyramid structure, to transfer properties between two images. Two applications are presented to demonstrate the results of using luminance channel in the similarity metric of two images. These are image generation; where a target image is to be generated from a source one, and image colorization; where color information is to be browsed from o
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An indoor spraying robot is built in this research to solve numerous challenges associated with manual spraying. The mechanical, hardware and essential technologies used are all detailed and designed. The proposed spraying robot's conceptual design is split into two parts: hardware and software. The mechanical design, manufacturing, electrical, and electronics systems are described in the hardware part, while the control of the robot is described in the software section. This robot's kinematic and dynamic models were developed using three links that move in the x, y, and z directions. The robot was then designed using SolidWorks software to compute each connection's deflection and maximum stresses. The characteristics of the stepper moto
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Urban morphological approach (concepts and practices) plays a significant role in forming our cities not only in terms of theoretical perspective but also in how to practice and experience the urban form structures over time. Urban morphology has been focused on studying the processes of formation and transformation of urban form based on its historical development. The main purpose of this study is to explore and describe the existing literature of this approach and thus aiming to summarize the most important studies that put into understanding the city form. In this regard, there were three schools of urban morphological studies, namely: the British, the Italian, and the French School. A reflective comparison between t
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