Medicinal plants contain active ingredients in one or some of their organs. Squalene is one of the active ingredients that prevent heart attacks and cardiovascular diseases and protect the body from some cancers. The aim of the present study was to investigate the presence of squalene in a number of medicinal plants. In this experiment, the plant oils were extracted and measured using Bligh & Dyer with minor changes. TLC (thin layer chromatography) was used to identify squalene. Comparison of TLC of standard squalene with TLC of the investigated medicinal plant samples showed that Caryophillium aromaticus, Descurainia sophia, Portulaca Oleracea, Papaver somniferum and Nigella Sativa contained squalene. Although the percentage of Papaver somniferum and Nigella Sativa seed oil was higher than other medicinal plants, the squalane spot of clove plant had a higher intensity of color and this indicates a higher concentration of squalene in this plant.

The hub location problem (HLP) is one of the most important and widely used issues in telecommunication and transportation (freight and passenger) network design. Hub location problem deals with locating the hub facilities in the network and determine the pattern based on the non-hub nodes assignment to each hub so that a specific objective function is optimized. Hubs are intermediate facilities that perform a set of tasks such as consolidation, break-bulk, sorting, etc. In other words, the traffic flows (cargo, passengers, or data) in the network rather than being sent directly from their origins to their destinations, are routed via these intermediate facilities. Established hubs in these networks can be disrupted because of events and natural disasters or deliberate disturbances during their use and in such a case an enormous cost is imposed on the operating companies. Therefore, it is crucial to have a suitable plan for reducing destructive effects of disrupted hubs in the network. In this study, an uncapacitated single allocation hub location problem under hub disruption is considered. It is assumed that every open hub in the network can fail and become unavailable after installation, in which case, the customers originally assigned to that hub, are either reassigned to other operational hubs or they do not receive service for which a penalty must be paid. The problem has been modeled as a two-stage stochastic program in which the decisions on hub locations are made in the first phase. In second phase when disruption scenario has occurred, the allocation of non-hub nodes to hubs takes place in second phase with regard to the operational hubs. A hybrid metaheuristic algorithm based on the adaptive large neighborhood search (ALNS) and simulated annealing (SA) is proposed for solving it. Extensive computational experiments based on the CAB and TR data sets are conducted. Results show the high efficiency of the proposed solution method.

Background and Objective: Probabilistic risk assessment through fault tree analysis is an effective tool to estimate the probability of hazardous event occurrence in chemical process industries. The probability of Failure occurrence for basic events is not often available in process industries. The aim of this study was to calculate the basic event Failure occurrence probability when these events have no precise Failure data.Materials and Methods: In this study, the proposed risk assessment framework was based on two fuzzy-based approaches, including five and six scales. Firstly, the fault tree diagram was constructed using the risk identification methods. Subsequently, the Failure occurrence probability of the basic events were calculated by applying the two types of Failure possibility distributions. Finally, the critical minimal cut sets were ranked using the importance measure analysis.Results: According to the results, the Failure occurrence probabilities calculated by the five-scale and six-scale approaches for the 32 basic events were closed to each other. The occurrence probability of the top event calculated by the five-scale and six-scale approaches were 3.64E-04 and 4.76E-04 per year, respectively. After ranking the minimal cut sets based on their calculated importance measures, the process Failures were determined as the critical causes of top event.Conclusion: As the findings indicated, the fuzzy-based approach seems to be a good alternative for the conventional Fault tree analysis approach for dealing with the basic events, which have no Failure rate data for obtaining the Failure occurrence probabilities. This study confirmed the consistency of fuzzy-based approach for the assessment of the basic event Failure occurrence probabilities.

Using the principle of "every temporal occurrence is preceded by a potentiality and matter which bears the former", Avicenna proved the existence of matter and potentiality (dispositional possibility). Subsequent philosophers and theologians reviewed and criticized the principle, Avicenna's argument and the relationship between essential possibility and dispositional possibility. Some of them hold that the two possibilities are equivocal, so Avicenna's argument as a fallacy of equivocation. Others regarded his argument devoid of any problem through proving that these two possibilities are univocal. Accepting body as a composition of matter and form is one of the requirements for believing in aforementioned principle. Therefore, such philosophers as Sohrevardi, Fakhr Razi, and Khawja Nassir who denied body as a composition of matter and form did not accept the principle. Issues related to dispositional possibility and its relationship with essential possibility were ambiguous before the advent of Transcendent Theosophy. After its advent, however, some of its followers proved and explained the principle "every temporal occurrence is preceded by a potentiality and matter which bears the former" and univocality of essential possibility and dispositional possibility using such principles as fundamentality and gradational unity of existence, and thence the validity of Avicenna's argument.

Mullah Sadra was the first philosopher who separated essential possibility from existential possibility in philosophy. He did not propose such separation in logic because logic is needless of it. Based on this separation, he founded the philosophical system of transcendent philosophy which completes peripatetic philosophy. Essential possibility means negation of necessity through negation and affirmation, that is, negation of necessity of existence and non-existence which is the very special possibility. Existential possibility means pure connection and attachment of the caused, such that it has no independent essence and existence. Invalidating essential possibility and proposing a new delineation for the issue of tripartite division of existence, substituting existential poverty for essential possibility in the criterion of dependence of the effect on the cause and revision of the principle of causality, completing and transcending the proof of the righteous to prove the existence of God centered around the creatures' indigence possibility, and attributing the evils to the existential deficiency of the contingent entities and purifying the essence of God from them are among the important benefits of this separation in transcendent philosophy.

Logical Positivism and Analytic Philosophy have opposed metaphysics for decades, but now some contemporary analytic philosophers have turned their attention to metaphysics, regarding it not only possible but indispensable. So now a rich tradition of analytic philosophy exists. Edward Jonathan Lowe, in an extensive academic project and a book reminiscent in its confrontation with metaphysics of Kant’s critical philosophy, has tried to show the possibility of metaphysics and to present his own non-Kantian and realist metaphysics. He argues that, in a clear distinction between metaphysics and empirical sciences, the task of metaphysics is not to say what there is, but to state what can exist. According to him, the subject matter of metaphysics is “possibilities”, while empirical sciences have “actualities” as their subject matter. He defends metaphysics as an intellectual activity, with a central role for philosophizing and a priority for metaphysics against empirical sciences, so that metaphysics and the metaphysical possibility of specific subject matters of sciences are always prior to all scientific theorizing. The findings of metaphysics are the foundations of the empirical sciences, expressive of the possibilities of existence, and help to specify the categories of existence and the relations between these categories. In his project, Lowe has tried to deduce the “possibility of metaphysics” from “metaphysical possibility”, to present his own metaphysical system as an indispensable autonomous discipline, and, accordingly, to solve some problems of philosophy.