Evaluation of Fertility Parameters in Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia Patients Treated with 5 Alph-Reductase Inhibitor (Finasteride) in Amara city/Iraq

The current study aimed to  determine the fertility parameters among BPH patients before and after 3 months of taking 5-α reductase (finasteride) by seminal fluid analysis method, 60 patients and 30 healthy individuals as control group from Amara city ,were involved in this study, their ages were between (40-59)year old. They all subjected  to direct seminal fluid analysis before and after 3 months of treatment by 5α-reductase(finasteride)(the healthy individuals didn’t take finasteride).The results showed that there is significant decreasing in volume (P˂0.05) in post-treatment group compared to pre-treatment and control group ,while the concentration of semen (count and total count) found to non-significantly decrease in post-treatment  compared with pre-treatment and decreases significantly (P˂0.05) in comparison to control control group. On other hand, the Motility(high, moderate) observed to non significantly decreased in post-treatment  group compared to pre-treatment group ,but significantly decreased (p<0.05)  compared to control group, The Morphology(normal and abnormal ) found to non significantly differences between pre-treatment group and post-treatment group, but that were significantly differences in control group compared to pre-treatment and post-treatment group. Concluded that BPH affects on fertility parameters. Keywords: BPH. fertility. semen, finasteride

Does visual letter similarity modulate masked form priming in young readers of Arabic?

Available online 19 January 2018 Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.004.Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.004.We carried out a masked priming lexical decision experiment to study whether visual letter similarity plays a role during the initial phases of word processing in young readers of Arabic (fifth graders). Arabic is ideally suited to test these effects because most Arabic letters share their basic shape with at least one other letter and differ only in the number/position of diacritical points (e.g., ض - ص ;ظ - ط ;غ - ع ;ث - ت - ن ب ;ذ - د ;خ - ح - ج ;ق - ف ;ش - س ;ز - ر). We created two one-letter-different priming conditions for each target word, in which a letter from the consonantal root was substituted by another letter that did or did not keep the same shape (e.g., خدمة - حدمة vs. خدمة - فدمة). Another goal of the current experiment was to test the presence of masked orthographic priming effects, which are thought to be unreliable in Semitic languages. To that end, we included an unrelated priming condition. We found a sizable masked orthographic priming effect relative to the unrelated condition regardless of visual letter similarity, thereby revealing that young readers are able to quickly process the diacritical points of Arabic letters. Furthermore, the presence of masked orthographic priming effects in Arabic suggests that the word identification stream in Indo-European and Semitic languages is more similar than previously thought.This article was made possible by a National Priorities Research Program (NPRP) award (Grant No. 6-378-5-035z) from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of the Qatar Foundation)

Does visual letter similarity modulate masked form priming in young readers of Arabic?

Available online 19 January 2018 Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.004.Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in the online version, at https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jecp.2017.12.004.We carried out a masked priming lexical decision experiment to study whether visual letter similarity plays a role during the initial phases of word processing in young readers of Arabic (fifth graders). Arabic is ideally suited to test these effects because most Arabic letters share their basic shape with at least one other letter and differ only in the number/position of diacritical points (e.g., ض - ص ;ظ - ط ;غ - ع ;ث - ت - ن ب ;ذ - د ;خ - ح - ج ;ق - ف ;ش - س ;ز - ر). We created two one-letter-different priming conditions for each target word, in which a letter from the consonantal root was substituted by another letter that did or did not keep the same shape (e.g., خدمة - حدمة vs. خدمة - فدمة). Another goal of the current experiment was to test the presence of masked orthographic priming effects, which are thought to be unreliable in Semitic languages. To that end, we included an unrelated priming condition. We found a sizable masked orthographic priming effect relative to the unrelated condition regardless of visual letter similarity, thereby revealing that young readers are able to quickly process the diacritical points of Arabic letters. Furthermore, the presence of masked orthographic priming effects in Arabic suggests that the word identification stream in Indo-European and Semitic languages is more similar than previously thought.This article was made possible by a National Priorities Research Program (NPRP) award (Grant No. 6-378-5-035z) from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of the Qatar Foundation)

Innovation capabilities, organisational culture, and organisational performance in the UAE

The organisational performance comprises real results or outputs compared to intended outcomes, depending on various factors. Organisational capacity and organisational culture are among the factors that influence work performance. Each affects differently to work performance of many countries due to different prevailing conditions of the countries. Despite the fact that this issue has been studied in many countries until today, issues on the influence of organisational innovation capabilities and culture on organisational performance are rarely studied in the UAE. Therefore, this study sought to identify the effect of organisational culture on innovation capabilities to improve the organisational performance of the economic development department in the UAE. In order to achieve the objective, this study employed a quantitative approach. A survey was conducted using a structured questionnaire to gather data involving 246 UAE economic development department employees. The instrument was developed based on literature reviews, consisting of three main elements: (1) innovation-related categories: vision and strategy, ivrganizational intelligence, creativity and idea management, management of technology, ivrganizational structure and system; (2) ivrganizational culture, and (3) organisational performance. The data were analysed using Moment Structure Modeling (AMOS-SEM). The findings revealed that organisational innovation capability influences work performance. The mediating effect of organisational culture has a substantial and direct effect on the performance of the UAE's economic development department. The R2 (coefficient of determination) obtained indicated that the effect of the study groups on innovation capability was medium. Thus, the operating performance of the economic development department in the execution by the UAE can be strengthened by taking into account the corporate atmosphere and capacity for growth

Bishop score versus transvaginal ultrasonographic measurement of cervical length in predicting successful labor induction in post-term pregnancy: prospective cohort study

Background: The current study aims to compare the efficacy of Bishop score assessment and transvaginal ultrasonographic measurement of the cervical length in prediction of the outcome of labor induction in post-term pregnancy.Methods: A comparative Prospective observational study conducted in Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Kom Ombo central hospital from January 2017 to October 2017. Pregnant women were classified into two groups of Bishop Score Group (1): ladies with (Bishop Score 5) = favorable cervix. Also, they were classified into two groups of cervical lengths: Group (1): women with (cervical length <25mm, shorter cervix) and Group (2): those with (cervical length ≥25 mm, longer cervix). The Primary outcome was Bishop score by digital examination and Cervical length by TVS.Results: The study group was 100 women. Regarding sonographic assessment, 44 patients had cervical length <25 mm and the mean cervical length for the whole study group was 25.19±8.16 mm. Successful induction was achieved in 78 patients (78%), while CS was done in 22 patients due to failed induction.  No difference between both groups regarding the parity (p=0.063). When comparing women with successful VD versus those delivered by CS, we found significantly higher Bishop score in the first group 5.12 ± 1.93  vs 3.89 ± 1.71 in the second group (p=0.002). Additionally, VD group had significantly shorter cervix than CS group (22.31 ±7.14 vs. 35.37± 5.80 mm, p=0.007). The Bishop score showed significant moderate negative correlation with the cervical length (r=-0.589, p=0.001).Conclusions: Success of labor induction in women undergoing induction due to prolonged pregnancy can be highly predicted by cervical length as it is more objective and accurate than Bishop Score. The 25 mm cut-off point for cervical length was the best predictor of vaginal delivery

Vision-based detection and tracking of moving target in video surveillance

In this paper a real-time detection and tracking of moving targets is presented. The scheme involved four phases. Phase one: Object segmentation which used to identify the foreground objects from the background by using background subtraction based on temporal differencing and a rolling-average background model. Phase two: Object recognition used to identify the foreground objects that should be tracked by using simple blob detection. Phase three: Object representation which takes the outcome from phase two. It computes the representation of each recognized object to be tracked. Phase 4: Object tracking that used Kalman filter. The results show that the tracking system is capable of target shape recovery and therefore it can successfully track targets with varying distance from camera or while the camera is zoomin

Do Diacritical Marks Play a Role at the Early Stages of Word Recognition in Arabic?

A crucial question in the domain of visual word recognition is whether letter similarity plays a role in the early stages of visual word processing. Here we focused on Arabic because in this language there are various groups of letters that share the same basic shape and only differ in the number/location of diacritical points. We conducted a masked priming lexical decision experiment in which a target word was preceded by: (i) an identity prime; (ii) a prime in which the critical letter was replaced by a letter with the same shape that differed in the number of diacritics (e.g., yes); or (iii) a prime in which the critical letter was replaced by a letter with different shape (e.g., yes). Results showed a sizable advantage of the identity condition over the two substituted-letter priming conditions (i.e., diacritical information is rapidly processed). Thus, diacritical marks play an essential role in the “feature letter” level of models of visual word recognition in Arabic.Grant NPRP No.6-378-5–035 from Qatar Foundatio

Does the Visual Attention Span Play a Role in Reading in Arabic?

Published online: 16 Jan 2018.It is unclear whether the association between the visual attention (VA) span and reading differs across languages. Here we studied this relationship in Arabic, where the use of specific reading strategies depends on the amount of diacritics on words: reading vowelized and nonvowelized Arabic scripts favor sublexical and lexical strategies, respectively. We hypothesized that the size of the VA span and its association to reading would differ depending on individual “script preferences.” We compared children who were more proficient in reading fully vowelized Arabic than nonvowelized Arabic (VOW) to children for whom the opposite was true (NOVOW). NOVOW children showed a crowding effect in the VA span task, whereas VOW children did not. Moreover, the crowding in the VA span task correlated with the reading performance in the NOVOW group only. These results are discussed in light of individual differences on the use of reading strategies in Arabic.This report was made possible by a National Priorities Research Program award (Grant NPRP No. 6-378-5–035) from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of The Qatar Foundation)

Dietary Effect of Antibiotic Growth Promoter and Essential Oil on Growth Performance, Carcass Traits and Some Physiological Indicators in Broilers

In this bioassay, we assessed the comparative effect of antibiotic growth promoter(AGP) and of essential oil (EO) addition on the growth performance, carcass traits, and some physiological indicators in the male Ross 308 broilers. A total of 90 healthy chicks (1 day of age) were randomly allocated to three groups, each comprising 6 replicates of 5 chicks. The first group was a control without any additive in water or feed, the second one was offered a drinking water with 0.5 g/l/day of antibiotic, and the third one was supplied a drinking water with 0.5 ml/liter of EO. In this study, neither AGP nor EO supplementation affected BW, BWG, FI, and FCR (p < 0.05) by AGP and EO supplementations compared to the untreated control group. In conclusion, it seems that there were no significant differences between the use of AGP or EO supplementation compared with the control group. Therefore, finding from this study demonstrated that essential oil (EO) could be used as a substitute for colistin antibiotic growth promoters (AGP) for broilers, and it’s the best strategic way to achieve healthy hygiene meat production free of antibiotic residues

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE PRODUCED BY SOLAR ENERGY FOR DRIVING DOMESTIC FREEZER

A prototype of photovoltaic based domestic chest type freezer was constructed, the prototype incorporates Phase Change Materials (PCM), as a thermal storage medium. Thereby, the units can work without the aid of the conventional batteries. A eutectic potassium chloride (KCl) aqueous solution was prepared to serve as phase change material. The PCM was stored in an integrated tank within the freezer box. Using PCM enables the freezer to preserve its cool storage at a temperature level below (-8 °C) for a holdover period not less than 30 hours without the need for power supply. The effect of PCM mass and PCM integrated storage tank thickness on the thermal performance of the freezer were studied experimentally. The experimental results showed that for 7 mm integrated storage thickness; the freezer box reaches steady state condition in two days with net compressor period operating time of 16 hours in which, the PCM changes from liquid to solid phase. The minimum temperature obtained was (-10 °C). In 18 mm integrated storage tank thickness three days of net compressor period operating time of 24 hours was required to reach steady state condition. In which, the minimum PCM temperature was (-8 °C). The study was extended to find the effect of frequently freezer door opening on the thermal performance of freezer