In Vitro Fertilization of Immature Oocytes by Testicular Sperm: Animal Model for Azoospermic Infertile Patients

Background: Men with azoospermia require testicular and epididymal sperm aspiration for intracytoplasmic sperm injection. Women over 37 years of age demonstrate an increase number of immature oocytes after induction of ovulation. The development of a technique for in vitro maturation (IVM) and fertilization (IVF) of the oocytes using testicular, epididymal and vassal sperm (TS, ES, VS, respectively) will be of therapeutic value for the treatment of azoospermic patients. Objectives: The goal of the study was to develop an animal model for the treatment of infertile couples with obstructive azoospermia and immature oocytes. Materials and Methods: Canine ovaries and testes were collected from a local animal clinic. Immature oocytes were retrieved from the ovaries and cultured in modified tissue culture medium (MTCM). The mature oocytes were in vitro fertilized by TS, ES, and VS. The normality of the fertilized oocytes was studied. Results: Sperm motility index was significantly higher (P<0.01) in sperm retrieved from the vas deference compared to ES and TS. The concentration of the sperm was significantly higher (P<0.05) in the testes compared to epididymis and vas deference while VS and ES normal morphology were significantly (p<0.01) better than TS. Viable oocyte percentage was significantly higher (P<O.05) in 72 hours versus 96 hours culture durations. Significant higher IVF was reported in VS compared to other groups (P < 0.05) and the SPI was significantly higher after 96 versus 72 hours duration (P<O.05). Conclusion: IVM of the oocytes in MTCM for 72 and 96 h resulted in a significant increase in IVM rate compared to 48,120, and 144 h durations. In vitro viable mature oocytes showed higher IVF rates when fertilized with VS compared to ES and TS. The results showed that canine oocytes are good model for azoospermic patients

Charge-exchange reactions and the quest for resolution

Hadronic charge-exchange reactions of the type (n, p) and (p, n) at intermediate energies between roughly 100 and 300MeV per nucleon have gained in importance over the last 25 year. This is because these reactions can be employed as a powerful tool in numerous fields of nuclear and particle physics alike. Charge-exchange experiments have significantly contributed to the understanding of the dynamics of spin and isospin excitation, to the structure of particle-hole states in light- and medium-mass nuclei and even to elucidating nucleon-nucleon and halo-nuclei properties. However, the most significant advancements have been made --and are still being made-- towards the understanding of weak interaction processes in nuclei, especially those where neutrinos play a pivotal role. This is foremost due to the high level of resolution, which was experimentally achieved over the course of time. This review focuses on the power of charge-exchange reactions, whereby particular emphasis will be placed on resolution. At the center will be the (n, p)-type $(d,{}^{2}{\rm He})$ reaction and the (p, n)-type $({}^{3}{\rm He},t)$ reaction

Charge-exchange reactions on double-β decaying nuclei populating Jπ=2− states

The (3He,t) charge-exchange reaction populating Jπ=2− states has been examined at 420 MeV incident energy for a series of double-β decaying nuclei, i.e., 76Ge, 82Se, 96Zr, 100Mo, 128Te, 130Te, and 136Xe. The measurements were carried out at the Grand Raiden spectrometer of the Research Center for Nuclear Physics at the University Osaka with typical spectral resolution of 30–40 keV. It is found that the charge-exchange reaction leading to 2− spin-dipole states is selective to the στ part of the interaction much similar to the observed selectivity to Gamow-Teller transitions. In the present case, the ΔL=1 peak cross sections at finite momentum transfers are used to extract the spin-isospin part of the low-lying transition strength near the Fermi surface (i.e., Ex≤5 MeV). Relative strength values are confronted with various model calculations, i.e., the interacting shell model, the quasiparticle random-phase approximation, and the Fermi surface quasiparticle model. The impact on the nuclear matrix elements for the neutrinoless double-β decay is discussed.peerReviewe

Fingerprint Segmentation Approach for Human Identification

Biometrics are essential in facility access control where human characteristics are used for person identification. Fingerprint is a basic identity for verification. Fingerprint segmentation is an open problem in biometrics, hence it is the first process towards the utilization of fingerprints for human recognition because each individual has a unique and permanent fingerprint sample. Considering this uniqueness, Fingerprint-based human verification is used in several applications for a an era. A fingerprint image is considered as a pattern which composed of two regions, foreground and background. The foreground contains the significant information utilized in the fingerprint identification systems. However, the background is usually noisy, distorted and unstable region that plays an important role in the extraction of false minutiae in the fingerprint system. In order to avoid this, we use fingerprint segmentation to isolate foreground/background fingerprint composites. Threshold, Entropy and Type-2 fuzzy-logic based fingerprint segmentation are presented and compared in this work. furthermore a demonstration of Fingerprint-based human verification approach that employee the presented segmentation techniques is presented and evaluated using ROC curve to prove the validity and reliability of proposed methodology