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
Low salinity (LS) water flooding is a promising EOR method which has been examined by many experimental studies and field pilots for a variety of reservoirs and oils. This paper investigates applying LS flooding to a heavy oil. Increasing the LS water temperature improves heavy oil recovery by achieving higher sweep efficiency and improving oil mobility by lowering its viscosity. Steam flooding projects have reported many problems such as steam gravity override, but override can be lessened if the steam is is alternated with hot LS water. In this study, a series of reservoir sandstone cores were obtained from Bartlesville Sandstone (in Eastern Kansas) and aged with heavy crude oil (from the same reservoir) at 95°C for 45 days. Five reservo
... Show MoreFive serological methods for detection of Brucella were compaired in this study, Four of the methods are commonely used in the detections:- 1-Rose-Bengal: as primary screening test which depends on detecting antibodies in the blood serum. 2-IFAT: which detects IgG and IgM antibodies in the serum. 3-ELISA test: which detects IgG antibodies in the serum. 4-2ME test: which detects IgG antibodies The fifth methods. It was developed by a reasercher in one of the health centers in Baghdad. It was given the name of spot Immune Assay (SIA). Results declares that among (100) samples of patients blood, 76, 49, 49, 37, and 28. samples were positive to Rose Bengal, ELISA, SIA, 2ME and IFAT tests, respectively. When efficiency, sensitivity and specific
... Show MoreThis paper deals with defining Burr-XII, and how to obtain its p.d.f., and CDF, since this distribution is one of failure distribution which is compound distribution from two failure models which are Gamma model and weibull model. Some equipment may have many important parts and the probability distributions representing which may be of different types, so found that Burr by its different compound formulas is the best model to be studied, and estimated its parameter to compute the mean time to failure rate. Here Burr-XII rather than other models is consider because it is used to model a wide variety of phenomena including crop prices, household income, option market price distributions, risk and travel time. It has two shape-parame
... Show MoreThis paper demonstrates an experimental and numerical study aimed at comparing the influence of openings of different configurations on the flexural behavior of reinforced concrete gable roof beams. The experimental program consisted of testing six simply supported gable beams subjected to mid-point concentrated load. The variable which has been investigated in this work was opening's configuration (quadrilateral or circular) with the same upper and lower chords depth. The results indicate improvement in the beams’ flexural behavior when circular openings were used compared with that of quadrilateral openings, represented by an increase in ultimate load capacity and a decrease in deflection at the service limit. Also, there was an
... Show MoreCarbon fibre reinforced polymers are widely used to strengthen steel structural elements. These structural elements are normally subjected to static, dynamic and fatigue loadings during their life-time. A number of studies have focused on the characteristics of CFRP sheets bonded to steel members under static, dynamic and fatigue loadings. However, there is a gap in understanding the bonding behaviour between CFRP laminates and steel members under impact loading. This paper shows the effect of different load rates from quasi-static to 300 × 103 mm/min on this bond. Two types of CFRP laminate, CFK 150/2000 and CFK 200/2000, were used to strengthen steel joints using Araldite 420 epoxy. The results show a significant bond strength enhancemen
... Show MoreThe study included evaluation of cell surface charge and hydrophobicity of Escherichia coli, Klebsilla aerogenes, Proteus spp, Bacillus cereus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Staphylococcus aureus(1) and Staphylococcus aureus(2) were determined by hydrocarbon adherence and hydrophobic interaction chromatography. The results showed that the negative charge of cell surface of gram negative bacteria was much higher than on gram positive once when these bacteria were grown on nutrient agar at 37 c for 18 h . E.coli was more negative charged than Klebsilla aerogenes and Proteus spp. The hydrophobicity of gram positive bacteria was much
... Show MoreTo achieve safe security to transfer data from the sender to receiver, cryptography is one way that is used for such purposes. However, to increase the level of data security, DNA as a new term was introduced to cryptography. The DNA can be easily used to store and transfer the data, and it becomes an effective procedure for such aims and used to implement the computation. A new cryptography system is proposed, consisting of two phases: the encryption phase and the decryption phase. The encryption phase includes six steps, starting by converting plaintext to their equivalent ASCII values and converting them to binary values. After that, the binary values are converted to DNA characters and then converted to their equivalent complementary DN
... Show MoreMethicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is one of the principal nosocomial causative agents. This bacterium has the capability to resist wide range of antibiotics and it is responsible for many diseases like skin, nose and wounds infection. In this study, randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-PCR was applied with ten random primers to examine the molecular diversity among methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) isolates in the hospitals and to investigate the genetic distance between them. 90 Isolates were collected from clinical specimens from Iraqi hospitals for a total of 90 isolates. Only 10 strains (11.11%) were found to be MRSA. From these 10 primers, only 9 gave clear amplification products. 91 fragment l
... Show MoreCarbon nanotubes (CNTs) were synthesized via liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) as precursor using flame fragments deposition (FFD) technique. In vitro, biological activates of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) synthesized by FFD technique were investigated. The physiochemical characterizations of synthesized CNTs are similar to other synthesized CNTs and to the standard sample. Pharmaceutical application of synthesized CNTs was studied via conjugation and adsorption with different types of medicines as promote groups. The conjugation of CNTs was performed by adsorption the drugs such as sulfamethoxazole (SMX) and trimethoprim (TMP) on CNTs depending on physical properties of both bonded parts. The synthesized CNTs almost have the same performance in a
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