A spermatic granuloma is a chronic inflammatory reaction produced in response to extravasated sperm within the intertubular connective tissue. The present study investigates the possible toxic effects of water extract of Heliotropium bacciferum on the reproductive system of male albino rats and the associated potential for the development of spermatic granulomas. H. bacciferum is a herbal plant used in traditional medicine and reported to have cytotoxic effects due to pyrrolizidine alkaloids. Histological examinations revealed no changes in the tissues of the testes, although, some changes were detected in the cauda epididymis, the most important of which was the development of small lesions of spermatic granulomas. Clear gaps were observed between the epithelial linings of the epididymal tubules. 相似文献
The structure of protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks has already been successfully used as a source of new biological information. Even though cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a major global cause of death, many CVD genes still await discovery. We explore ways to utilize the structure of the human PPI network to find important genes for CVDs that should be targeted by drugs. The hope is to use the properties of such important genes to predict new ones, which would in turn improve a choice of therapy. We propose a methodology that examines the PPI network wiring around genes involved in CVDs. We use the methodology to identify a subset of CVD-related genes that are statistically significantly enriched in drug targets and “driver genes.” We seek such genes, since driver genes have been proposed to drive onset and progression of a disease. Our identified subset of CVD genes has a large overlap with the Core Diseasome, which has been postulated to be the key to disease formation and hence should be the primary object of therapeutic intervention. This indicates that our methodology identifies “key” genes responsible for CVDs. Thus, we use it to predict new CVD genes and we validate over 70% of our predictions in the literature. Finally, we show that our predicted genes are functionally similar to currently known CVD drug targets, which confirms a potential utility of our methodology towards improving therapy for CVDs. 相似文献
A micelle enhanced spectrofluorimetric method was developed for determination of Omarigliptin (OMG) based on its native fluorescence behavior. The interaction of OMG with surfactants and macromolecules was studied. In aqueous solution, the relative fluorescence intensity (RFI) of OMG was enhanced by 24% in the presence of Tween 80 at pH 3.5. The optimal conditions for the micelle enhanced fluorescence were attained by Minitab® program using Plackett–Burman factorial design. Pareto chart, contour plots and surface plots were used to exclude the insignificant variables and optimize the significant factors. The spectrofluorimeter was operated under synchronous mode using ?λ = 30 nm and recording the RFI of the intense narrow band at 267 nm for OMG in 0.5% w/v Tween 80 + 0.2 M acetate buffer (pH 3.5) system using water as diluent. Using synchronous scan mode offered many advantages including considerable reduction of spectral overlap and enhanced linearity of the calibrators. Validation parameters were satisfied over the concentration range 0.1–2 μg/ml. The developed method was the first analytical procedure for OMG assay in Marizev® tablets. Moreover, content uniformity testing and in vitro drug release of tablets were performed. 相似文献
An approach is presented for studying individual pattern development in person-oriented terms focusing on the concept of i-state, i.e. an individual's configuration of information at a specific point in time. The procedure is called I-States as Objects Analysis (ISOA). First common i-states (typical states) are identified using cluster analysis of subindividuals and then this information is used for describing typical developmental patterns. Both a general procedure and a specific procedure used on a demonstration data set were developed. Using ISOA, change and stability can be studied both with regard to structure and with regard to individual variation. An empirical example was given which concerned longitudinal data about school grades at four different ages for 333 boys and girls. The data were split into a test sample and a replication sample of equal sizes. It was contended from the empirical study that ISOA functioned reasonably well on the sample studied. In the discussion, it was pointed out that ISOA can be a powerful method to use for small samples with many measurement occasions and that the method is optimal for studying short-term change. 相似文献
Aims
One of the outstanding challenges facing humankind is increasing crop production under various types of severe environmental conditions. Many measures have been taken to adopt molecular and biotechnological approaches that lead to the development of transgenic plants able to deal with such harsh and polluted environments. However, such solutions could be very expensive and require considerable efforts and time to achieve these objectives. The main objective of this review is to discuss the new biological solutions that have emerged in the last decade, as environmentally friendly approaches, perhaps to support and/or replace the present efforts. These solutions based on plant–microbe interactions could be a lifeline and promising alternative strategy to create plants with a high resistance to the extreme environments. 相似文献
Determining the 3D pose of the patella after total knee arthroplasty is challenging. The commonly used single-plane fluoroscopy is prone to large errors in the clinically relevant mediolateral direction. A conventional fixed bi-planar setup is limited in the minimum angular distance between the imaging planes necessary for visualizing the patellar component, and requires a highly flexible setup to adjust for the subject-specific geometries. As an alternative solution, this study investigated the use of a novel multi-planar imaging setup that consists of a C-arm tracked by an external optoelectric tracking system, to acquire calibrated radiographs from multiple orientations. To determine the accuracies, a knee prosthesis was implanted on artificial bones and imaged in simulated 'Supine' and 'Weightbearing' configurations. The results were compared with measures from a coordinate measuring machine as the ground-truth reference. The weightbearing configuration was the preferred imaging direction with RMS errors of 0.48 mm and 1.32 ° for mediolateral shift and tilt of the patella, respectively, the two most clinically relevant measures. The 'imaging accuracies' of the system, defined as the accuracies in 3D reconstruction of a cylindrical ball bearing phantom (so as to avoid the influence of the shape and orientation of the imaging object), showed an order of magnitude (11.5 times) reduction in the out-of-plane RMS errors in comparison to single-plane fluoroscopy. With this new method, complete 3D pose of the patellofemoral and tibiofemoral joints during quasi-static activities can be determined with a many-fold (up to 8 times) (3.4mm) improvement in the out-of-plane accuracies compared to a conventional single-plane fluoroscopy setup. 相似文献
Simple thermal evaporation technique has been used to prepare Pb-doped ZnO nanotube films on Si (100) substrate. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) characterization have been employed to investigate the element’s contents, which indicates the presence of stoichiometry ZnO nanotube film. The XRD pattern has shown the wurtzite phase of ZnO and polycrystalline structure. Thickness and morphology of the films were explored from the cross sectional of the films and the surface using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images. SEM images have confirmed the ZnO nanotubes and modifications of the morphology when adding Pb; the recorded images have proved that the diameter of the nanotubes is about 50 nm. However, AFM and SEM images have shown dense structure (without nanotubes) for non-doped ZnO film (Pb = 0 wt.%).