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Introduction: Increased blood lipids are an important factor in the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases and heart attacks in humans. The aim of this study is to compare the effect of the traditional medicine product Lipexan with placebo along with Gemfibrozil on blood lipid indicators. Material and methods: This study was conducted as a double-blind randomized clinical trial with a parallel design, on 109 patients with hyperlipidemia. After entering the study, patients were randomly divided into two groups receiving Lipexan herbal capsules (containing garlic, sumac, apple cider vinegar, fenugreek and dill) and placebo capsules. Both groups received Gemfibrozil capsules at the same time and were prescribed the same diet. The duration of treatment was 40 days. The lipid profile of the patients was checked before and after taking the drugs. Results: In the Lipexan drug treatment group, the average blood triglyceride before taking the drug was 362.2 mg/dl, which reached 243.1 mg/dl after taking the drug. Also, the average blood cholesterol before and after taking the drug was 201.4 and 187.7, respectively. Statistically, there was a significant decrease in triglyceride, total cholesterol, Low Density Lipoprotein, High Density Lipoprotein, fasting blood sugar and alkaline Phosphatase after taking Lipexan drug (P<0.05). Conclusion: The present study shows that Lipexan herbal capsule is effective in reducing blood fats and lipid profile in hyperlipidemia patients compared to placebo capsule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines and proposes several attribution models that quantify how revenue should be attributed to online advertising inputs. We adopt and further develop relative importance methods, which are based on regression models that have been extensively studied and utilized to investigate the relationship between advertising efforts and market reaction (revenue). The relative importance methods aim at decomposing and allocating marginal contributions to the coefficient of determination (R2) of the regression models as attribution values. In particular, we adopt two alternative submethods to perform this decomposition: dominance analysis and relative weight analysis. Moreover, we demonstrate an extension of the decomposition methods from standard linear models to additive models. We claim that our new approaches are more flexible and accurate in modeling the underlying relationship and quantifying the attribution values. We use simulation examples to demonstrate the superior performance of our new approaches to traditional methods. We further illustrate the value of our proposed approaches using a real advertising campaign data set. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online measurement of wheel–rail contact forces is nowadays in demand for evaluating safety and manoeuvring the condition in real time and in real operation. In this study, the wheel–rail contact forces are estimated using a novel indirect identification method based on the measured radial strain on the wheel web. Further, the strain response of the rolling wheel is derived using an analytical solution of the disk under a rotating load, and a scheme was prepared for the identification of the rolling wheel parameters and its corresponding characteristic matrix. An appropriate angular strain configuration is employed to eliminate the effect of wheel rotation. The Tikhonov regularization technique is employed to solve the ill-posed least square problem and to attenuate the effect of noisy measurement and numerical uncertainty during the estimation of the forces. A finite element model of the rotating load is then constructed to investigate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed methodology. The effects of the rotating speed, loading and measurement noise on the estimated normal force are studied. It is found that neglecting the effect of the rotating speed causes a notable error particularly in the high-speed range. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marine propeller hydrodynamics and noise study is an important issue in considering the suitable performance of the ships and submarines. At the first step of this study, the hydrodynamics of two propellers was studied under different operating conditions. Then the sheet cavitation inception and development conditions were obtained in order to determine the impact of varying rotational speeds of the propeller and pressure drop on the propeller noise. At the second step, the overall Sound Pressure Levels (SPLs) for each one of these models were extracted under non-cavitating and sheet cavitating conditions. The overall SPLs were calculated through the Ffowcs Williams-Hawkings (FWH) equation and its integral solutions. In this work, the flow field was analysed through the FVM, and then the flow data, including pressure fluctuations, sheet cavitation volume, and velocity magnitude results of the flow solution were used as the inputs for the FW-H formulation to predict the overall SPLs. The results of the flow analysis are significant since they are used as the noise sources in the FW-H equations to obtain the overall SPLs. Therefore, these results must be thoroughly analysed. The numerical hydrodynamic results were compared with the experimental results from the two propellers and a good coordination was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biochemical components in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.), such as saponins, can act as protecting factors against bio-stresses. Saponins are also antifeedants and show oral toxicity towards higher and lower animals. Changes in saponins, such as variation in the carbon skeleton, or hydrolysis of saponin glycosides and other conjugates, may change their biological effects. The aims of this research were to study saponin variation in different growth stages of alfalfa and to investigate the biological role of saponins in the spotted alfalfa aphid, Therioaphis maculata. Saponins from alfalfa shoots in different growth stages were extracted, chemically purified and analysed by TLC. Specific saponins such as soyasaponin1 from root and shoot and two bisdesmosides of medicagenic acid, one from shoot and another from root tissues, were identified using reference compounds allowing changes in saponin composition during plant development in different shoot tissues of alfalfa to be assessed. The response of the alfalfa aphid to feeding on alfalfa in different growth stages was studied. No significant difference in the survival of aphids, from neonate to adult, was observed, but due to the antibiotic effects of saponins, two differences were found in the onset of nymph production and cumulative nymph production. The results show that the saponin composition in alfalfa changes with plant development and this, in turn, can often negatively affect the development of specific insect pests such as the spotted alfalfa aphid, suggesting a possible biological role of alfalfa saponins. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The results of studies on in vitro regeneration of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) have shown that indirect regeneration via callus was not successful. The introduction of an efficient and repeatable regeneration protocol is necessary for using transgenic technologies for the improvement of chickpea. The present study was undertaken to investigate the possibility of indirect regeneration in various chickpea genotypes. In this experiment, cotyledonary node explants of 20 chickpea genotypes were cultured on 6 callus induction media and were sub-cultured on 6 shoot induction media with different combinations of phytohormons that are introduced in other literatures as best combination for regeneration. The results showed that reduction in experimental time and cost was possible by only transferring green calluses to other processes of culture. It seems that the results of this study and the suggested protocol could be used in genotypes as MCC426, MCC495, MCC496, MCC724, MCC741, MCC763, MCC764, MCC769, MCC775, MCC 779, MCC78O, MCC798, MCC805 and MCC814 in suggestive media for genetic transformation and other projects where organogenesis via callus formation is necessary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes an efficient and easy method for oxidation of sulfides 1 to their corresponding sulfoxides 2 with 1-butyl-4-aza-1-azoniabicyclo[2.2.2]octane dichromate (BAAOD) under nonaqueous conditions in high yields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]