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Aims The reduced production of ovarian hormones is considered to be the cause of an increase in the incidence of heart disease in women after menopause. Phytoestrogens are found in various herbal sources and are considered as an alternative to hormone therapy because of structural similarity with oestrogen. Elaeagnus angustifolia L., known as Senjed in Persian, is used in Iranian traditional medicine with various medicinal properties, contains valuable compounds, including two types of phytoestrogens. The aim of the present study was to investigate the efficacy of E. angustifolia fruit on the cardiovascular function, lipid and glycaemic profiles in postmenopausal women. Methods In this double‐blind placebo‐controlled clinical trial, 58 postmenopausal women were randomly assigned into two experimental groups of medicinal herb (15 g/day of the whole E. angustifolia fruit powder) and placebo (15 g/day of isomalt + corn starch). Before the trial and after 10 weeks of the treatment, cardiovascular function (heart rate, blood pressure), serum glycaemic profile (fasting blood glucose; glycated haemoglobin, HbA1C), insulin and lipid profile (total cholesterol, TC; triglyceride, TG; LDL‐C and HDL‐C) were measured. Results Heart rate, and serum level of LDL‐C and HDL‐C significantly decreased after treatment with E. angustifolia. Changes in glycaemic profile were not clinically significant. In addition, some studied biochemical parameters significantly changed in the placebo group. Conclusions E. angustifolia was somewhat effective in improving cardiovascular function and lipid profile, as well as the overall health of postmenopausal women. However, the use of isomalt and corn starch in menopausal women needs further investigation.

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Bacteriorhodopsin (bR) is a trans-membrane proton pump found in the purple membrane of Halobacterium salinarum. This protein has high photochemical and photoelectric conversion efficiency and thermal stability, allowing it to withstand high temperatures, high salinity, and nutritionally-limited environments. The ability of this protein to convert light energy into chemical energy has applications that are mainly therapeutic/diagnostic and research-oriented. There is increasing demand for bacteriorhodopsin production in different fields. The present study maximized bacteriorhodopsin production using H. salinarum. The physical parameters of illumination, agitation speed, temperature, and nitrogen source were studied using a fractional factorial design to determine the optimal levels of each. The most suitable nitrogen source was determined to be peptone from meat. The optimal temperature was 39 °C, agitation speed was 150 rpm, and light intensity was 6300 lux for bR production. Under these conditions, the maximum bR yield was 196 mg/l, which is about 4.23 fold greater than those obtained with basal medium. The proposed strategies could be used for bR production using this archaeobacterium; the results are the highest reported thus far from a batch culture of H. salinarum.

<span>In this paper, an android expert system for recommending the suitable journal for publishing the researchers' papers has been presented. In so doing, the expectations of different journals for accepting an article and also the requests of papers' writers for choosing the journals have been examined. Language, quality, waiting time for judgment, waiting time for publication after acceptance, field, length of paper and cost are the system inputs and its output is the degree of suitability of journals for publishing a certain paper. This system includes a database of different journals and their parameters. It uses particle swarm optimization method and K-means++ algorithm for assessing and clustering the journals database and determines an index for every cluster of journals. The process for matching the paper with a cluster's index is done through fuzzy induction system. After choosing the most similar cluster, the paper is compared with all the journals of the cluster in the same way and the result including the most similar journals is presented. This system has been tested for journals and papers in the computer field indexed in Elsevier.</span>