BACKGROUND: Tribulus terrestris has been commonly used in folk medicine to energize, vitalize and improve sexual function and physical performance in men and laboratory rats. OBJECTIVE: To study the effect of Tribulus terrestris on the number of Leydig cells. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Tribulus terrestris was given to mature male rats as an oral single herbal suspension in a dose of 2.0mg /1000gbody weight for 14 days to stimulate spermatogenesis. Formalin fixed paraffinembedded tissue sections were performed for histological, immunohistochemical and morphometrical studies. RESULTS: Histological study revealed wider seminiferous tubules and increased spermatocytes population with an increased sperm density inside the lumen of the tubules. Morphometrically, the diameters of seminiferous tubules and thickness of the germinal epithelia were significantly increased in Tribulus terrestris treated rats than that of the control group. There was no significant difference between the number of Leydig cells in the control and experimental groups. CONCLUSION: The activity of Leydig cells, manifested by the increments in the diameters, thickness of germinal epithelia and the density of the sperms inside seminiferous tubules, was increased but their number remain unaffected in spite of using the aphrodisiac agent, Tribulus terrestris. KEY WORDS: rat testis, tribulus terrestris, leydig cells.
Sensing insole systems are a promising technology for various applications in healthcare and sports. They can provide valuable information about the foot pressure distribution and gait patterns of different individuals. However, designing and implementing such systems poses several challenges, such as sensor selection, calibration, data processing, and interpretation. This paper proposes a sensing insole system that uses force-sensitive resistors (FSRs) to measure the pressure exerted by the foot on different regions of the insole. This system classifies four types of foot deformities: normal, flat, over-pronation, and excessive supination. The classification stage uses the differential values of pressure points as input for a feedforwar
... Show MoreThe need for quick airborne transportation is critical, especially in emergencies. Drones with suspended payloads might be used to accomplish quick airborne transportation. Due to the environment or the drone's motion, the slung load may oscillate and lead the drone to fall. The altitude and attitude controls are the backbones of the drone's stability, and they must be adequately designed. Because of their symmetrical and simple structure, quadrotor helicopters are one of the most popular drone classes. In this work, a genetic algorithm with two weighted terms fitness function is used to adjust a Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller to compensate for the altitude and attitude controllers in a quadrotor drone with a slun
... Show MoreThe Sequencing Batch Reactor system (SBR) is a major component of the municipal wastewater biological treatment system and water reclamation that provides high-quality water that could be reused in restricted plants that which require large quantities of water despite the lack of water. The research aims to investigate the performance of a pilot plant SBR unit under real operation conditions that was installed and operated in Al-Rustamiya Wastewater Treatment Plant (WWTP), Baghdad, Iraq. Results showed that the BOD5/COD ratio of the raw wastewater was within the average value at 0.66 emphasizing the organic nature of the influent flow and hence the amenability to biological treatment. The results also ensured that the treatment pro
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As one type of heating furnaces, the electric heating furnace (EHF) typically suffers from time delay, non-linearity, time-varying parameters, system uncertainties, and harsh en-vironment of the furnace, which significantly deteriorate the temperature control process of the EHF system. In order to achieve accurate and robust temperature tracking performance, an integration of robust state feedback control (RSFC) and a novel sliding mode-based disturbance observer (SMDO) is proposed in this paper, where modeling errors and external disturbances are lumped as a lumped disturbance. To describe the characteristics of the EHF, by using convection laws, an integrated dynamic model is established and identified as an uncertain nonlinear second ord
... Show MoreIn this paper a new structure for the AVR of the power system exciter is proposed and designed using digital-based LQR. With two weighting matrices R and Q, this method produces an optimal regulator that is used to generate the feedback control law. These matrices are called state and control weighting matrices and are used to balance between the relative importance of the input and the states in the cost function that is being optimized. A sample power system composed of single machine connected to an infinite- bus bar (SMIB) with both a conventional and a proposed Digital AVR (DAVR) is simulated. Evaluation results show that the DAVR damps well the oscillations of the terminal voltage and presents a faster respo
... Show MoreAdsorption techniques are widely used to remove organics pollutants from waste water particularly, when using low cost adsorbent available in Iraq. Al-Khriet powder which was found in legs of Typha Domingensis is used as bio sorbent for removing phenolic compounds from aqueous solution. The influence of adsorbent dosage and contact time on removal percentage and adsorb ate amount of phenol and 4- nitro phenol onto Al-Khriet were studied. The highest adsorption capacity was for 4-nitrophenol 91.5% than for phenol 82% with 50 mg/L concentration, 0.5 gm. dosage of adsorbent and pH 6 under a batch condition. The experimental data were tested using different isotherm models. The results show that Freundlich model resulted in the best fit also
... Show MoreMolecular barcoding was widely recognized as a powerful tool for the identification of organisms during the past decade; the aim of this study is to use the molecular approach to identify the diatoms by using the environmental DNA. The diatom specimens were taken from Tigris River. The environmental DNA(e DNA) extraction and analysis of sequences using the Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) method showed the highest percentage of epipelic diatom genera including Achnanthidium minutissimum (Kützing) Czarnecki, 1994 (21.1%), Cocconeis placentula Ehrenberg, 1838 (21.3%) and Nitzschia palea (Kützing) W. Smith, 1856 (16.3%).
Five species of diatoms: Achnanthidiu
... Show MoreLiquid – liquid equilibria data were measured at 293.15 K for the pseudo ternary system (sulfolane + alkanol) + octane + toluene. It is observed that the selectivity of pure sulfolane increases with cosolvent methanol but decreases with increasing the chain length of hydrocarbon in 1-alkanol. The nonrandom two liquid (NRTL) model, UNIQUAC model and UNIFAC model were used to correlate the experimental data and to predict the phase composition of the systems studied. The calculation based on NRTL model gave a good representation of the experimental tie-line data for all systems studied. The agreement between the correlated and the experimental results was very good
The aim of this research is to assess the validity of Detailed Micro-Modeling (DMM) as a numerical model for masonry analysis. To achieve this aim, a set of load-displacement curves obtained based on both numerical simulation and experimental results of clay masonry prisms loaded by a vertical load. The finite element method was implemented in DMM for analysis of the experimental clay masonry prism. The finite element software ABAQUS with implicit solver was used to model and analyze the clay masonry prism subjected to a vertical load. The load-displacement relationship of numerical model was found in good agreement with those drawn from experimental results. Evidence shows that load-displacement curvefound from the finite element m
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