project selection is considered as an important problem in project management. it is multi-criteria in nature and is based on various quantitative and qualitative factors. the main purpose of this paper is to present a new rank-based method for project selection in outranking relation. according to this approach, decision alternatives were clustered in the concordance matrix and the discordance...

Staphylococcus aureus is a major pathogen in humans and causes serious problems due to antibiotic resistance. We investigated the antimicrobial effect of glycyrrhetinic acid (GRA) and its derivatives against 50 clinical S. aureus strains, including 18 methicillin-resistant strains. The minimum inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of GRA, dipotassium glycyrrhizate, disodium succinoyl glycyrrhetinate...

We have previously evaluated the beneficial effect of the group reminiscence approach (GRA) in patients with vascular dementia (VaD) in respect of cognitive and observed behavioral parameters [1] . Sixty patients who had been diagnosed with VaD were randomly assigned to three arms: a GRA arm, a social contact (SC) arm, and a control arm. A 1-hour session of GRA and SC was held once a week for 3...

BACKGROUND The prevalence of primary hyperaldosteronism (PHA) in the hypertensive population has increased in recent years. Glucocorticoid-remediable aldosteronism (GRA) is a rare monogenic form of PHA. Here we report a German family with GRA. Since the phenotype of GRA varies widely, we asked whether recommended algorithms for PHA diagnosis distinguish GRA from other forms of PHA. METHODS Pl...

18β-Glycyrrhetinic acid (GRA), a major component of Glycyrrhiza glabra, is widely used therapeutically in clinic. In this study, the effect of GRA on Helicobacter pylori- (H. pylori-) infected gastritis was investigated in Mongolian gerbils in vivo. The gerbils were randomly divided into groups: uninfected; H. pylori-infected; H. pylori + antibiotics (clarithromycin, amoxicillin, and esomeprazo...

The genes for polyketide synthases (PKSs), enzymes that assemble the carbon backbones of many secondary metabolites, often cluster with other secondary pathway genes. We describe here the first lichen PKS cluster likely to be implicated in the biosynthesis of a depside and a depsidone, compounds in a class almost exclusively produced by lichen fungi (mycobionts). With degenerate PCR with primer...