Gas phase hold up in gas-liquid cocurrent upflow packed bed reactors at low Reynold's number

Experimental measurements of gas phase hold up in two phase gas-liquid cocurrent upflow packed bed reactors have been made at very low gas ((N_Re)_g < 55) as well as liquid ((N_Re)_l < 8) velocities using air-water systems with two different types of packing materials. The gas hold up values thus obtained are correlated in terms of Re_g, Re_l and l, the voidage.     

Evaluation of anti-pyretic potential of Ficus racemosa bark.

A study was carried out to evaluate the anti-pyretic effect of a methanol extract of stem bark of Ficus racemosa Linn. (MEFR) on normal body temperature and yeast-induced pyrexia in albino rats. A yeast suspension (10 ml/kg body wt.) increased rectal temperature 19 h after subcutaneous injection. The MEFR, at doses of 100, 200 and 300 mg/kg body wt. p.o., showed significant dose-dependent reduction in normal body temperature and yeast-provoked elevated temperature. The effect extended up to 5 h after drug administration. The anti-pyretic effect of MEFR was comparable to that of paracetamol (150 mg/kg body wt., p.o.), a standard anti-pyretic agent.     

Characterization of a novel and selective CB1 antagonist as a radioligand for receptor occupancy studies

Obesity remains a significant public health issue leading to Type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease. CB1 antagonists have been shown to suppress appetite and reduce body weight in animal models as well as in humans. Evaluation of pre-clinical CB1 antagonists to establish relationships between in vitro affinity and in vivo efficacy parameters are enhanced by ex vivo receptor occupancy data. Synthesis and biological evaluation of a novel and highly selective radiolabeled CB1 antagonist is described. The radioligand was used to conduct ex vivo receptor occupancy studies.     

Regeneration of zoysia grass (Zoysia matrella L. Merr.) cv. Konhee from young inflorescences and stem nodes

We have optimized conditions for efficient regeneration of the vegetatively propagated zoysia grass (Zoysia matrella L. Merr) cultivar “Konhee”. Two explants, young inflorescences, and stem nodes, were used and they displayed different responses to combinations and concentrations of plant growth regulators in callusing, embryogenic callus formation, and regeneration. The highest callus initiation rate from young inflorescences was obtained on medium supplemented with 4.5 to 9.0 μM 2,4-dicholorophenoxy acetic acid (2,4-D) and 0.44 μM 6-benzyl amino purine (BA). When the BA concentration was lowered to 0.044 μM, the highest percent embryogenic callus induction from young inflorescences was achieved. The highest callus initiation rate from stem nodes was obtained, when young inflorescences were cultured on MS medium supplemented with 4.5 to 9.0 μM 2,4-D, 0.44 μM BA, and 0.037 μM abscisic acid (ABA). But embryogenic callus formation from the stem node was highest in the presence of 4.5 to 9.0 μM 2,4-D, 0.044 μM BA, and 0.037 μM ABA. Addition of ABA significantly increased embryogenic callus formation from stem nodes, but not from young inflorescences. Regeneration percentage was variable in response to BA level, and inclusion of α-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and gibberellic acid (GA₃) further increased the regeneration percentage. The highest regeneration percentages obtained from the young inflorescences and stem nodes were 82% and 67%, respectively. This is the first report showing that plants can be regenerated from young inflorescences and stem nodes of vegetatively propagated zoysia grass.     

Photodynamic effects of two hydroxyanthraquinones

The aim of this work was to investigate the photodynamic action of electron-rich anthraquinones, viz., cynodontin (CYN) and cynodontin-5,8-dimethylether (CYNM). Both optical and EPR methods are used to detect the generation of singlet oxygen. Based on RNO bleaching, relative to rose bengal (RB), singlet oxygen generating efficiencies of CYN and CYNM are derived to be 0.055 and 0.254, respectively. The formation of superoxide anion via electron transfer to O2 was monitored by optical spectroscopy, using SOD-inhibitable cytochrome c reduction assay. The production of O2-* is enhanced in the presence of electron donors such as EDTA and NADH. Photolysis of CYN and CYNM in DMSO, in the presence of 5,5-dimethyl-1-pyrroline-N-oxide (DMPO), generates a multi-line EPR spectrum, characteristic of spin adduct mixture of O2-* and *OH. Both optical and ESR measurements indicate that O2-* (Type I) and 1O2 (Type II) paths are involved in CYN and CYNM photodynamic action.     

In vitro activity of alpha-mangostin in killing and eradicating Staphylococcus epidermidis RP62A biofilms

Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology - Alpha-mangostin (α-MG) has been reported to be an effective antibacterial agent against planktonic cells of many Gram-positive bacteria. However, the...     

BCC-NER: bidirectional,contextual clues named entity tagger for gene/protein mention recognition

Tagging biomedical entities such as gene, protein, cell, and cell-line is the first step and an important pre-requisite in biomedical literature mining. In this paper, we describe our hybrid named entity tagging approach namely BCC-NER (bidirectional, contextual clues named entity tagger for gene/protein mention recognition). BCC-NER is deployed with three modules. The first module is for text processing which includes basic NLP pre-processing, feature extraction, and feature selection. The second module is for training and model building with bidirectional conditional random fields (CRF) to parse the text in both directions (forward and backward) and integrate the backward and forward trained models using margin-infused relaxed algorithm (MIRA). The third and final module is for post-processing to achieve a better performance, which includes surrounding text features, parenthesis mismatching, and two-tier abbreviation algorithm. The evaluation results on BioCreative II GM test corpus of BCC-NER achieve a precision of 89.95, recall of 84.15 and overall F-score of 86.95, which is higher than the other currently available open source taggers.     

Cu(I) recognition via cation-pi and methionine interactions in CusF

Methionine-rich motifs have an important role in copper trafficking factors, including the CusF protein. Here we show that CusF uses a new metal recognition site wherein Cu(I) is tetragonally displaced from a Met2His ligand plane toward a conserved tryptophan. Spectroscopic studies demonstrate that both thioether ligation and strong cation-pi interactions with tryptophan stabilize metal binding. This novel active site chemistry affords mechanisms for control of adventitious metal redox and substitution chemistry.     

Could adrenal insufficiency serve as a predictor of immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) in HIV disease?

Immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) is an inflammatory manifestation that occurs subsequent to initiation of highly active antiretroviral therapy in terminal (HAART) HIV infection, mainly due to the restoration of robust immune responses directed against latent microbial antigens. IRIS is believed to be multifactorial and less studied. Herein, we postulate that hypothalamo-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) dysregulation, a well-documented manifestation in HIV/AIDS, could possibly disturb the balance between pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines leading to clinical IRIS. Drugs, opportunistic infections, stress and numerous intrinsic and extrinsic factors have been described to be the possible causes of IRIS in HIV illness.