---

Nowadays, biological substances have allocated many applications to themselves in distinct industries. In this field, biological molecules with various potentials have been identified, from which we can refer to bacteriorhodopsin (BR). Bacteriorhodopsin is found in purple membrane of halobacterium salinarum. Due to its stability and various characteristics like possession of properties of a proton pump, bacteriorhodopsin has many applications in different industries. One of the most important industrial and semi-industrial production processes for bacteriorhodopsin is the isolation and purification of the purple membrane. In this investigation, after halobacterium salinarum culture, the purification was done according to the Yucel method. So as to produce bacteriorhodopsin in semi-industrial scale, a modified method was developed by substitution of mechanical approach with enzymatically method to destruction of DNA and uses of osmotic shock instead of dialyze. This method led to decrease of time and isolation cost in comparison to Yucel method. The contamination percentage of the PM was estimated below 5% for both methods. The purification percentages were 67±1% and 68±4% for the modified method and Yucel method, respectively, which is indicating of the equal purification percentage for both methods. Bacteriorhodopsin amount was 8.2±0.4, 8.1±0.6 mg per liter for the improved method and Yucel method, respectively. The enzyme activity assay by Kuyama method indicated that the pH variation was 1 unit with the same BR amount for both methods. Hence, the modified method introduced in this investigation could reduce time and costs of the purification by maintaining the BR characteristics.

---

It has been demonstrated that anxiety is accompanied by significant warm up in the periorbital area. This warm up was attributed to the increased blood circulation in the area around the eyes. The whole pattern makes physiological and evolutionary sense since it represents a mechanism to facilitate rapid eye movements during preparedness for fight. This increased blood flow dissipates convective heat, which can be monitored through thermal imaging. The evolution of these variables along the timeline and across the 2D space can reveal important clues about anxiety. In this work, we use both facial thermal imaging analysis and poly graph examination to evaluate the effectiveness of thermal imaging in situation of anxiety. The system had been evaluated on six subjects and for each of them four times, each time in two minutes. It operates on the raw temperature signal and tries to improve the information content by suppressing the noise level instead of amplifying the signal as a whole. Finally, a pattern recognition method classifies stressful (deceptive) from non-stressful (non-deceptive) subjects based on a comparative measure between the entire baseline signal and a transient response. The successful classification rate with Multi Layer Perceptron is about 74.7% that is a little better than the LDA method.

---

Every year, more than 600,000 tons of rice husk are produced in rice mills in Iran, which are left in nature without proper use or burned. But, with biotechnological methods, it is possible to convert these agricultural wastes into compost with high content of nitrogen and minerals. Accelerating the production of high quality organic fertilizer and reducing the process time requires determining and studying the factors affecting the composting process. In this research, rotten wood waste in the presence of whey was used as an inoculum and the process was studied for one hundred days. The results showed that the process of rice husk composting decreased the ratio of carbon to nitrogen from 161.2 to 21.1 and also increased the nitrogen content from 0.28 to 1.33 percent. By studying temperature changes during the process, it was determined that the degradation of easily biodegradable compounds at the beginning of the process caused an increase in the population of microorganisms and an increase in temperature, and as the process continued, the temperature of the composting environment gradually decreased. On the other hand, the results indicated that the addition of tree bark fertilizer does not affect the quality of the compost content, but it changed the color of the product. The results of the evaluation of the produced compost showed that adding 10 percent by weight of compost to the soil had a significant effect on the length and weight of cowpea.
 

---

This study is concerned with optimizing the daily operation of a solar power plant equipped with thermal energy storage system (TES). The modeling is performed by solving a set of non-linear governing equations and is verified through comparison with the literature. "Maximum production period" and "maximum revenue" constitute the objectives of the optimization study which are first considered individually (as two single-objective problems) and are then considered simultaneously (as a multi-objective problem). Genetic Algorithm (GA) is employed as the optimization tool. The results of the first objective (maximum production period) shows 7 hours increase in the daily production time as a result of employing the TES system. This occurred through saving energy during the times of high solar radiation and using the stored energy for electricity generation during the times of low or zero solar radiation. The results of the second objective (maximum revenue) indicate 13.5% increase in the produced profit as a result of employing the TES system. This improvement was resulted from saving energy during the times of low electricity price and using the stored energy for maximum electricity generation during the times of high electricity price. Finally, in the multi-objective study, 5 hours increase in the production period and 8.1% increase in the revenue were simultaneously obtained as a result of a proper tradeoff between the two objectives.