Journal of Sciences, Islamic Republic of Iran
Volume:31 Issue: 3, Summer 2020

Epithelial Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality among women all over the world. As chemotherapeutics has many side effects, researchers have focused on the potential use of medicinal plants as natural antitumor agents. Xanthium strumarium studied in this work as an herbal anticancer agent. This study aimed to evaluate the antitumor effect and metabolic alterations caused by the root extract of X. strumarium on human ovarian cancer cell line (A2780cp), using NMR-based metabolomics approaches. Cells were cultured and treated with different concentrations of the ethanolic plant extract. Antitumor activity determined by MTT assay and cell metabolites extracted for NMR spectroscopy. 1H NMR spectroscopy was applied, and outliers were analyzed using multivariate statistical analysis techniques. The extract exhibited antitumor activity against ovarian cancer cells with an IC50 of 6 μg/ml after 48 hours of treatment. The most affected metabolic pathways in the experimental groups were limited to tyrosine metabolism, nucleotide metabolism, fatty acid biosynthesis, and glycerolipid metabolism. Our data showed that the ethanolic root extract of X. strumarium has antitumor activity on the ovarian cancer cells and can affect vital metabolic pathways. However, further studies required to validate this activity.

In this paper, the synthesis of various enaminones from the reaction of 3-aminocoumarin and ethyl-2,4-dioxo-4-arylbutanoate in the presence of p-toluene sulfonic acid is reported. The reaction was examined under different solvents and catalytic systems, which clearly proved the importance of acidic catalyst in this organic transformation. This work was also accompanied by density functional theory (DFT) studies to justify the formation of final products.

Bio-absorbent palm fiber was applied for removal of cationic violet methyl dye from water solution. For this purpose, a solid phase extraction method combined with the artificial neural network (ANN) was used for preconcentration and determination of removal level of violet methyl dye. This method is influenced by factors such as pH, the contact time, the rotation speed, and the adsorbent dosage. In order to find a suitable model of parameters and calculate the desired output, two radial basis function (RBF) and multi-layer perceptron (MLP) non-recursive functions, which are among widely used artificial neural networks, were used for training the input data. The performance of this method is tested by common statistical parameters including RMSE, MAE, and CE. The results show that the artificial neural network algorithm has a good performance in simulating and predicting the removal of violet methyl dye.

In this paper, conventional SAPO-34 and Cerium Hierarchical SAPO-34 zeolites are synthesized using a hydrothermal method for methanol-to-propylene (MTP) reaction. The Ce-H-SAPO-34 catalyst shows a slightly larger crystal size, bimodal pore size distribution (microporous and mesoporous) and lower surface acidity compared to conventional SAPO-34 catalysts. According to these physicochemical properties and the previously suggested reaction mechanisms on the conventional SAPO-34 catalyst, a new reaction network is introduced for Ce-H-SAPO-34 catalyst. This was based on the data collected from a catalytic micro reactor in the temperature range of 390-450°C and at atmospheric pressure. The lumped kinetic model and the reaction rate expression have been introduced by considering the reaction network. The parameters were then estimated based on the experimental data using genetic algorithms. Comparing the experiments with the predicted data suggests a good correlation between the experimental data and the model.

Oligo-Miocene Bagh-e-Khoshk granitoid stock is intruded into the Eocene volcanic rocks in the southeastern part of the Urumieh-Dukhtar Magmatic assemblage in Iran. The granitoids are mainly consisting of diorite, quartz diorite and granodioritic rock types. They are metaluminous to slightly peraluminous, medium to high K calc-alkaline, with SiO2 ranging from 50.2 to 66 wt.%. The major elements mostly define linear trends and negative slopes with increasing of SiO2, while K2O is positively correlated with silica. There is a higher content of Ba, Rb, Nb and Zr elements with increasing SiO2, whereas Sr shows an opposite behavior. Primordial mantle-normalized multi-element patterns show enrichment in LILE relative to HFSE with distinctive Nb, Ta, Ti negative anomalies. These signatures are typical of subduction related magmas that formed in an active continental margin. The high Ba/La Ba/TiO2, Ba/Nb and Th/Nb ratios emphasizes the significant involvement of fluids during subduction processes. The chondrite-normalized REE patterns of the Bagh-e-Khoshk granitoids show an enrichment in light REEs ((La/Yb)n = 3.84, 7.41), very slightly HREE fractionation patterns ([Gd/Yb]n=1.26–1.83)  and small positive Eu anomalies (EuN/EuN* = 1.01, 1.44) in diorites. Whole-rock Sm–Nd isotope analysis give εNd values (+2.91 to +3.29) and Sr ratios (0.7046–0.7053). The geochemical characteristics, positive εNd and low Sr ratios of the Baghe-Khoshk granitoids suggest their formation from partial melting of the mantle wedge source, at pressures below the garnet stability field, modified by fluids during subduction processes.

Nowadays, centrifugal compressors are commonly used in the oil and gas industry, particularly in the energy transmission facilities just like a gas pipeline stations. Therefore, these machines with different operational circumstances and thermodynamic characteristics are to be exploited according to the operational necessities. Generally, the most important operational parameters of a gas pipeline booster station includes the compressor's input and output pressures, input and output temperatures and also the flow rate passing from the compressors. Different values of those parameters related to every point of operational conditions will exactly affect on the compressor poly-tropic efficiency and their driver fuel consumption. Although, calculating of the poly tropic efficiency and fuel consumption using the existing thermodynamic relations, would need to apply rather awkward equations for each operating point. In this research, a feed forward perceptron artificial neural network is presented to predict the output operational conditions. The network would be trained at least in two scenarios applying by practical data in the neuro solution software version.5 using the Levenberg-Marquadt algorithm and the optimum model is experimentally selected according to R2, MSE and NMSE.

The plasma wave acceleration of electron in the bubble regime is investigated in a new configuration containing a planar wiggler. The space-charge field of the laser-created ion channel can focuse and stabilize the electron trajectory to guide it toward the acceleration region. The high-gradient plasma wave field can resonantly accelerate the trapped electron to higher energies in the presence of a planar wiggler compensating the electron dephasing. The results show that in the lower plasma wave amplitudes the planar wiggler plays a more significant role on the electron energy enhancement. The increment of the electron energy in this configuration isvalidated using a three-dimension single-particle code. The energy gain of electrondependency on the planar wiggler, ion channel field, plasma wave angle and amplitude as well as the initial energy of electron has been investigated. The results of paper will be of importance in the optimization of electron energy and improving the quality of the accelerated electrons in the plasma wakefield accelerators.