Background: With increasing infectious diseases as well as antimicrobial resistance in pathogens to existing drugs, researchers are now seeking for new drug candidates to be used as alternatives or complementary therapies. Maca is commonly used in traditional medication as herbal medicine. Materials & Methods: In this research, the antibacterial and antifungal activities of maca powder and ethanolic extract were evaluated against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC25923, Pseudomonas aeruginosa ATCC27853, Escherichia coli ATCC25922, Enterococcus faecalis ATCC29212, and Candida albicans ATCC10231 using Minimum Inhibitory Concentration (MIC), Minimum Bactericidal Concentration (MBC), and disc diffusion methods. Results: The obtained results showed that there was no significant difference between the MIC and MBC of maca powder and extract against the reference and clinical strains. Also, no strain showed zone of inhibition at 50, 40, 30, and 60 μ l of reference concentration. Conclusion: According to the results obtained in this study, maca powder and extract had a poor inhibitory effect on bacterial and fungal growth.

In this research paper, we looked at the synthesis and characterization of zinc nanoparticles using the green synthesis approach. The Brassicaceae family medicinal herb Lepidium meyenii Walp. was used in an attempt to make zinc nanoparticles. Zinc nanoparticles were made from zinc sulfate and an extract from Lepidium meyenii Walp. UV-VIS and FT-IR analyses were used to perform the optical characterization. The architecturally generated nanoparticles were characterized by X-RD, TEM, and SEM. The DPPH test was also used to measure antioxidant activity. At 100 μg/ml, the percentage inhibition values for ZnO-NPs, ascorbic acid, Lepidium meyenii Walp extract, and BHA were determined to be 86.62, 75.62, 71.75, and 59.35 μg/mL, respectively. The ability of the nanoparticle to prevent the growth of cancer cells in the large intestine has been found.

This experiment was conducted in the poultry field of the Department of Animal Production, College of Agriculture, Al-Qasim Green University, Iraq, for the period from 1/10/ 2021 to 4/11/ 2021. The current study aimed to use different levels of maca roots (Lepidium meyenii) to reduce the effects of experimentally-induced oxidative stress by using hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) in broiler chickens. In the present experiment, 225 unsexed broiler chicks (Ross 308) were used, distributed randomly to 15 cages, with five experimental treatments for each treatment of 45 birds, and each treatment included three replicates for each replicate of 15 birds. The experimental treatments were as follows: the first treatment was considered as the control group (basic diet + drinking water free of H2O2). The second group: basic diet and water supplemented with 0. 5% H2O2 at a concentration of 0. 5%. The third group: adding 1 g of maca roots/kg of the basic diet + drinking water containing 0. 5% H2O2. The fourth group: adding 1. 5 g of maca roots/kg of the basic diet + drinking water containing 0. 5% H2O2. The fifth group: adding 2 g of maca roots/kg of the basic diet + drinking water containing 0. 5% H2O2. The most important results of the study can be summarized as follows: the recorded data showed significant superiority (P≤, 0. 05) for the first, third, fourth, and fifth treatments in the average live body weight in the fifth week and the total weight gain compared to the second treatment. In addition, the first, fourth, and fifth treatments revealed the best cumulative food conversion ratio and the best productivity index measure, with a significant difference (P≤, 0. 05) compared to the second treatment.

Background & Objective: Infertility is a widespread health issue, with male factors solely responsible in approximately 20% of cases and contributing to an additional 30–40%. In vitro sperm preparation using motility-enhancing agents prior to assist reproductive techniques (ART) has shown potential in improving semen quality and increasing pregnancy rates. This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a novel combination of motility stimulants—Maca, L-carnitine, and pentoxifylline—on sperm function, particularly the DNA fragmentation index (DFI), and to compare the effectiveness of the swim-up and density gradient (layering) techniques for sperm activation.  Materials & Methods: Semen samples were collected from 90 asthenozoospermic men. Samples were divided into two groups: a control group using Ham’s F-12 medium and a treatment group using medium supplemented with Maca powder (1 mg/mL), pentoxifylline (10 mg/mL), and L-carnitine (0. 5 mg/mL). Sperm activation was performed using both the swim-up and Layering techniques. Sperm parameters were evaluated according to WHO guidelines (1999 and 2021). Data were analyzed using SPSS version 23. 0 with Student’s t-test, ANOVA, and the LSD post-hoc test. Results:  The treatment group demonstrated significant improvements (P<0. 05) in sperm concentration, motility (grades A and B), morphology, and reduced DNA fragmentation index. Both preparation techniques showed comparable improvements, although the Layering (density gradient) method yielded slightly better outcomes in DNA integrity. Conclusion:  The combination of pentoxifylline, L-carnitine, and Maca significantly enhanced sperm function. The Layering technique was marginally more effective than swim-up in selecting spermatozoa with intact DNA.

The ancient region of Makran is located in the southeast of the Iranian plateau and on the northern shores of the Makran Sea, whose borders stretch from Pars and Kerman in the west to Sindh in the east. This vast area was limited to Khorasan and historical Sistan from the nort This region has a valuable history of several thousand years and civilization and a special geographical location. The South Sea of Iran has been called the "Sea of Makran" for centuries due to its proximity to the land of Makran and has played an important role in the events in the south and southeast of Iran and its ports have long had a privileged commercial position. The passage of merchant ships and caravans carrying goods from India, China, Yemen, the Red Sea, and the east coast of Africa to the eastern regions made it one of the busiest areas for maritime and land trade. Makran cities such as the port of Tiz Faraj, Bampur, Cage, etc. were considered as important anchorages and rest areas of these roads. In this article, an attempt is made to examine the historical background of the Makran Sea using historical and geographical sources, and the reason for changing the historical and Iranian name "Makran" to "Oman" after centuries, along with the role of British colonialism in this change. Investigate and find out why, since the opening of the colonial powers to all parts of the world, including Central Asia, many countries have changed their names and historical and geographical declarations with direct intervention, and the historical name "Makran Sea" has been removed from new historical and geographical documents. And instead the nameless and unprecedented name was "Sea of Oman".

Sequential decision making describes a situation where the decision maker makes successive observations of a process before a final decision is made. In real-world scenarios, multi-objective sequential decision-making problems have been common and pose multiple challenges for researchers in decision-making. Most studies in this area have traditionally focused on single-objective situations or converted multi-objective problems into single-objective ones by combining objectives into a single goal. In this article, a multi-objective deep reinforcement learning framework called "MACA," based on the actor-critic method is presented, to optimize and balance multiple conflicting objectives in dynamic environments over time. This framework learns different policies for various objectives and eventually converges them to a global optimal policy. This framework, is evaluated in the domain of recommender systems for two conflicting objectives: accuracy (the desirability of recommended items for users) and fairness (the selection of recommended items from all categories); and, compared with other recent multi-objective reinforcement learning methods. Experimental results on the benchmark problem (recommender systems) demonstrate that this framework outperforms previous works in terms of performance (the accuracy was 92.5% with a fairness score of 96.5% on the Kiva dataset, and 93.1% accuracy with a fairness score of 97.6% on the MovieLens dataset), convergence time, and memory consumption. Moreover, the proposed framework is scalable with respect to the number of objectives and enables optimization of the variable number of objectives.

Sexual function is one of the most important aspects of menopausal women, and its disorder is a common condition among this group of women. The long-term side effects of hormone replacement therapy to improve this disorder have led women to seek alternative therapies. The purpose of this review is to summarize clinical trials of herbal medicines that improve the sexual function of menopausal women. In this review article the content was searched in 6 databases to identify double-and triple-blind clinical trial studies from January 2000 to April 2020. The search was conducted in English and Persian. Studies were considered if they were related to menopausal woman, sexual function and its various domains. A total of 479 articles were reviewed, 31 of which were included in the study after reviewing the full text. In this study, 3 articles on ginseng, 4 articles on fennel, 2 articles on Fenugreek, 3 articles on bindii, 3 articles on Red clover, 1 article on Schisandra, 2 articles on Hops; 3 articles about Black cohosh, 2 articles about soy, 2 articles about Ginkgo biloba, 1 article about Nigella sativa, 1 article about neroli oil, 1 article about maca, 1 article about Date pollen, 1 article about Aphrodite and 1 article on the combination of St John’ s wort and vitex were evaluated. Red ginseng, fennel, bindii, Red clover and Black cohosh have the greatest effect on improving the sexual function of menopausal women, and people can be encouraged to use these plants.