Background: Dietary intakes are critical during pregnancy, because inadequate amounts of key nutrients may compromise fetal development or maternal health. In addition to that maternal diet could be one of the methods to select the gender of the baby. The aim of the study is to correlate the level of the minerals in the mother’s blood with the gender and wellbeing of the baby after delivery.
Patients and Methods: Fifty women were involved in this study with a mean age (23.92 ± 4.75), collected from the labor room during labor in the period between December 2013 and May 2014, in Baghdad teaching hospital. After taking a full history from the women, 10 ml of blood was withdrawn from them, 2ml in EDTA tubes for lead estimation and 8 m

     Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease with unknown etiology, though genetic and environmental factors appear to play a role in its pathogenesis. In particular, infectious processes are linked to the onset and exacerbation of SLE. The aim of the current study was to understand the relationship between some biochemical factors in SLE patients. 105 blood samples from both genders were collected.  ELISA technique was used for detecting specific procalcitonin, vitamin D and calcium. The results of this study showed that SLE patients recorded the lowest percentages of calcium (7.36 ± 0.10 mg/dl) than control (11.97 ± 2.12 mg/dl), and vitamin D (7.79 ± 0.58 pg/ml) than control (22.10 ± 4.8

The study is based on the selective binding ability of the drug compound procaine (PRO) on a surface imprinted with nylon 6 (N6) polymer. Physical characterization of the polymer template was performed by X-ray diffraction and DSC thermal analysis. The imprinted polymer showed a high adsorption capacity to trap procaine (237 µg/g) and excellent recognition ability with an imprinted factor equal to 3.2. The method was applied to an extraction column simulating a solid-phase extraction to separate the drug compound in the presence of tinoxicam and nucleosimide separately and in a mixture of them with a recovery rate more than the presence of tinoxicam and nucleosimide separately and in a mixture of them with a recovery rate of more t

BCl3 is toxic gas and its detection is of great importance. Thus, here, B3LYP, M06-2X, and B97D density functionals are utilized for probing the effect of decorating Zn, Cd, and Au on the sensing performance of an AlP nano-sheet (AlPNS) in detecting the BCl3. We predict that the interaction of pure AlPNS with BCl3 is physisorption, and the sensing response (SR) of AlPNS is approximately 9.2. The adsorption energy of BCl3 changes from −4.1 to −18.8, −19.1, and −19.5 kcal/mol by decorating the Zn, Cd, and Au metals into the AlPNS surface, respectively. Also, the corresponding SR meaningfully rises to 40.4, 59.0, and 80.9, indicating that by increasing the atomic number of metals, the sensitivity of metal decorated AlPNS (metal@AlPNS)

This study presents a comprehensive set of laboratory works for the examined soil layers extracted from Baghdad city (specifically from Alkadhimya, Alaitaifiya, and Alhurriya) to illustrate their engineering properties. The researchers have adopted the unified soil classification system for soil classification purposes. Also, the direct shear test was performed for soil samples with various degrees of saturation (0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100%). The test results have shown a significant reduction in cohesion property with higher moisture content within soil samples. Also, a noticeable reduction in angle of internal friction value has occurred with such changes. Furthermore, it has been found that the bearing capacity of unsaturated soi

The genus Ziziphus is one of the Family Rhamnaceae and consists of more than 170 species distributed in tropical and subtropical regions. All the species in the genus are of economical and medical importance. This study was conducted to identify the morphologically and anatomically features of the genus in Iraq.  The field survey was conducted across the study area where 4 species (Ziziphus jujube, Z. mauritiana, Z. nummularia and Z. spina-christi) were collected and used in the study.  The result showed that there is variation in morphological and anatomical features among the species in the stem cross-section and longitudinal section of leaves also the differences appeared in the epidermis of leaves.

Reactive Powder Concrete (RPC) could be considered as the furthermost significant modern high compressive strength concrete. In this study, an experimental investigation on the impact of micro steel fiber volume fraction ratio and gamma ray irradiation duration influence upon the compressive strength of RPC is presented. Three volume fraction ratios (0.0, 1.0 and 1.5) % was implemented. For each percentage of the adopted fiber ratios, six different irradiation duration was considered; these are (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) days. Gamma source (Cs-137) of energy (0.662) MeV and activity (6) mci was used. In a case of zero volume fraction ratio, the experimental results showed that gamma ray had a significant influence on the reducing of the