Search results for: banana leaf extract

Authors: Waleed S. Alwaneen

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Dairy industry is flourishing in world to provide milk and milk products to local population. Besides milk products, dairy industries also generate a substantial amount of cow manure that significantly affects the environment. Moreover, heat produced during the decomposition of the cow manure adversely affects the crop germination. Different companies are producing vermicompost using different species of worms/larvae to overcome the harmful effects using fresh manure. Tiger worm treatment enhanced plant growth, especially in the compost-manure ratio (75% compost, 25% cow manure), followed by a ratio of 50% compost, 50% cow manure.  Results also indicated that plant growth in Waxworm treated manure was weak as compared to plant growth in compost treated with Fruit Beetle (FB), Waxworms (WW), and Control (C) especially in the compost (25% compost, 75% cow manure) and 100% cow manure where there was no growth at all. Freshplant weight, fresh leaf weight and fresh root weight were significantly higher in the compost treated with Tiger worms in (75% compost, 25% cow manure); no evidence was seen for any significant differences in the dry root weight measurement between FB, Tiger worms (TW), WW, Control (C) in all composts. TW produced the best product, especially at the compost ratio of 75% compost, 25% cow manure followed by 50% compost, 50% cow manure.

Keywords: fruit beetle, tiger worms, waxworms, control

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Authors: H. Imad, Y. Cheah, O. Aamera

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The aims of this research are to study the mitochondrial non-coding region by using the Sanger sequencing technique and establish the degree of variation characteristics of a fragment. FTA® Technology (FTA™ paper DNA extraction) utilized to extract DNA. A portion of a non-coding region encompassing positions 37 to 340 amplified in accordance with the Anderson reference sequence. PCR products purified by EZ-10 spin column then sequenced and detected by using the ABI 3730xL DNA Analyzer. New polymorphic positions 57, 63, and 101 are described may in future be suitable sources for identification purpose. The data obtained can be used to identify variable nucleotide positions characterized by frequent occurrence most promising for identification variants.

Keywords: encompassing nucleotide positions 37 to 340, HVII, Iraq, mitochondrial DNA, polymorphism, frequency

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Authors: Giannis Arnaoutis, Dimitra Efthymiopoulou, Maria-Foivi Nikolopoulou, Yannis Manios

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AIM: Nitrate-containing supplements have been used extensively as ergogenic in many sports. However, extract fractions from plant-based nutritional sources high in nitrate and their effect on athletic performance, has not been systematically investigated. The purpose of the present study was to examine the possible effect of acute consumption of a “smart mixture” from beetroot and rocket on exercise capacity. MATERIAL & METHODS: 12 healthy, nonsmoking, recreationally active, males (age: 25±4 years, % fat: 15.5±5.7, Fat Free Mass: 65.8±5.6 kg, VO2 max: 45.46.1 mL . kg -1 . min -1) participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial study, in a randomized and counterbalanced order. Eligibility criteria for participation in this study included normal physical examination, and absence of any metabolic, cardiovascular, or renal disease. All participants completed a time to exhaustion cycling test at 75% of their maximum power output, twice. The subjects consumed either capsules containing 360 mg of nitrate in total or placebo capsules, in the morning, under fasted state. After 3h of passive recovery the performance test followed. Blood samples were collected upon arrival of the participants and 3 hours after the consumption of the corresponding capsules. Time until exhaustion, pre- and post-test lactate concentrations, and rate of perceived exertion for the same time points were assessed. RESULTS: Paired-sample t-test analysis found a significant difference in time to exhaustion between the trial with the nitrate consumption versus placebo [16.1±3.0 Vs 13.5±2.6 min, p=0.04] respectively. No significant differences were observed for the concentrations of lactic acid as well as for the values in the Borg scale between the two trials (p>0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Based on the results of the present study, it appears that a nutritional supplement derived from vegetable extracts rich in nitrate, improves athletic performance in recreationally active young males. However, the precise mechanism is not clear and future studies are needed. Acknowledgment: This research has been co‐financed by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, under the call RESEARCH – CREATE – INNOVATE (project code:T2EDK-00843).

Keywords: sports performance, ergogenic supplements, nitrate, extract fractions

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Authors: Maryam Idris Bakori

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The level of poverty in our region (West Africa) is a severe problem. The statistics about it are scary and alarming. For example, Report on Economic and Social Conditions in West Africa by United Nations Economic Commission for Africa gives the following gloomy picture of social conditions in the region: In West Africa, approximately one person in three in the towns, and one in two in the rural areas, cannot afford the expenditure needed to cover their basic needs. The situation has reached emergency proportions and calls for urgent social action (Recent Economic and Social Developments in West Africa and Prospects for 2010). Many different policies and programs to combat the poverty in the region have been embarked upon by the government of various countries in West Africa, but yet the ugly face of poverty persists. However, to explore opportunities and avenues for making positive contributions to national and regional development, this paper sets out to examine the role of two Islamic institutions; Zakah and Waqf, in poverty alleviation and how Islam uses these two institutions among others to eradicate poverty. The paper suggests that the governments of various countries of West Africa should endeavor to integrate Zakah and Waqf into their poverty alleviation programs by borrowing a leaf from some countries in Africa and Asia that have integrated these Islamic institutions into their poverty reduction programs, and they have started to reap the positive result from the policy.

Keywords: waqf, poverty, zakah, Islamic economy, education

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Authors: Sajjad Baghernezhad, Saeideh Baghernezhad

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Nowadays considering human involved in increasing data development some methods such as data mining to extract science are unavoidable. One of the discussions of data mining is inherent distribution of the data usually the bases creating or receiving such data belong to corporate or non-corporate persons and do not give their information freely to others. Yet there is no guarantee to enable someone to mine special data without entering in the owner’s privacy. Sending data and then gathering them by each vertical or horizontal software depends on the type of their preserving type and also executed to improve data privacy. In this study it was attempted to compare comprehensively preserving data methods; also general methods such as random data, coding and strong and weak points of each one are examined.

Keywords: data mining, distributed data mining, privacy protection, privacy preserving

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Authors: A. Chellil, A. Nour, S. Lecheb , H. Mechakra, A. Bouderba, H. Kebir

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The study of the rotor dynamic in transient system allowed to determine the vibratory responses due to various excitations. This work presents a coupled gyroscopic effect in the defects of a rotor under dynamic loading. Calculations of different energies and virtual work from the various elements of the rotor are developed. To treat real systems a model of finite element was developed. This model of the rotor makes it possible to extract the frequencies and modal deformed, and to calculate the stresses in the critical zone. The study of the rotor in transient system allowed to determine the vibratory responses due to the unbalances, crack and various excitations.

Keywords: rotor, defect, finite element, numerical

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Authors: Kanika Gupta, Ashok Kumar

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Biofilms are dense, highly hydrated cell clusters that are irreversibly attached to a substratum, to an interface or to each other, and are embedded in a self-produced gelatinous matrix composed of extracellular polymeric substances. Research in biofilm field has become very significant, as biofilm has shown high mechanical resilience and resistance to antibiotic treatment and constituted as a significant problem in both healthcare and other industry related to microorganisms. The massive information both stated and hidden in the biofilm literature are growing exponentially therefore it is not possible for researchers and practitioners to automatically extract and relate information from different written resources. So, the current work proposes and discusses the use of text mining techniques for the extraction of information from biofilm literature corpora containing 34306 documents. It is very difficult and expensive to obtain annotated material for biomedical literature as the literature is unstructured i.e. free-text. Therefore, we considered unsupervised approach, where no annotated training is necessary and using this approach we developed a system that will classify the text on the basis of growth and development, drug effects, radiation effects, classification and physiology of biofilms. For this, a two-step structure was used where the first step is to extract keywords from the biofilm literature using a metathesaurus and standard natural language processing tools like Rapid Miner_v5.3 and the second step is to discover relations between the genes extracted from the whole set of biofilm literature using pubmed.mineR_v1.0.11. We used unsupervised approach, which is the machine learning task of inferring a function to describe hidden structure from 'unlabeled' data, in the above-extracted datasets to develop classifiers using WinPython-64 bit_v3.5.4.0Qt5 and R studio_v0.99.467 packages which will automatically classify the text by using the mentioned sets. The developed classifiers were tested on a large data set of biofilm literature which showed that the unsupervised approach proposed is promising as well as suited for a semi-automatic labeling of the extracted relations. The entire information was stored in the relational database which was hosted locally on the server. The generated biofilm vocabulary and genes relations will be significant for researchers dealing with biofilm research, making their search easy and efficient as the keywords and genes could be directly mapped with the documents used for database development.

Keywords: biofilms literature, classifiers development, text mining, unsupervised learning approach, unstructured data, relational database

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Authors: Dalia. G. Aseel, E. E. Hafez, S. M. Hammad

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Viral RNAs of both potato leaf roll virus (PLRV) and potato virus Y (PVY) were extracted from infected potato leaves collected from different Egyptian regions. Differential Display Polymerase Chain Reaction (DD-PCR) using (Endogluconase, β-1,3-glucanases, Chitinase, Peroxidase and Polyphenol oxidase) primers (forward strand) for was performed. The obtained data revealed different banding patterns depending on the viral type and the region of infection. Regarding PLRV, a 58 up regulated and 19 down regulated genes were detected, while, 31 up regulated and 14 down regulated genes were observed in case of PVY. Based on the nucleotide sequencing, variable phylogenetic relationships were reported for the three sequenced genes coding for: Induced stolen tip protein, Disease resistance RPP-like protein and non-specific lipid-transfer protein. In a complementary approach, using the quantitative Real-time PCR, the expressions of PRs genes understudy were estimated in the infected leaves by PLRV and PVY of three potato cultivars (Spunta, Diamont and Cara). The infection with both viruses inhibited the expressions of the five PRs genes. On the contrary, infected leaves by PLRV or PVY elevated the expression of some defense genes. This interaction also may be enhanced and/or inhibited the expression of some genes responsible for the plant defense mechanisms.

Keywords: PLRV, PVY, PR genes, DD-PCR, qRT-PCR, sequencing

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Authors: Aïcha Ben Salem, Faouzi Boufares, Sebastiao Correia

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The subject covered in this paper aims at assisting the user in its quality approach. The goal is to better extract, mix, interpret and reuse data. It deals with the semantic schema recognition of a data source. This enables the extraction of data semantics from all the available information, inculding the data and the metadata. Firstly, it consists of categorizing the data by assigning it to a category and possibly a sub-category, and secondly, of establishing relations between columns and possibly discovering the semantics of the manipulated data source. These links detected between columns offer a better understanding of the source and the alternatives for correcting data. This approach allows automatic detection of a large number of syntactic and semantic anomalies.

Keywords: schema recognition, semantic data profiling, meta-categorisation, semantic dependencies inter columns

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Authors: A. B. Moldes, X. Vecino, L. Rodriguez-López, J. M. Dominguez, J. M. Cruz

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The concept of the circular economy is focus on the importance of providing goods and services sustainably. Thus, in a future it will be necessary to respond to the environmental contamination and to the use of renewables substrates by moving to a more restorative economic system that drives towards the utilization and revalorization of residues to obtain valuable products. During its evolution our industrial economy has hardly moved through one major characteristic, established in the early days of industrialization, based on a linear model of resource consumption. However, this industrial consumption system will not be maintained during long time. On the other hand, there are many industries, like the corn milling industry, that although does not consume high amount of non renewable substrates, they produce valuable streams that treated accurately, they could provide additional, economical and environmental, benefits by the extraction of interesting commercial renewable products, that can replace some of the substances obtained by chemical synthesis, using non renewable substrates. From this point of view, the use of streams from corn milling industry to obtain surface-active compounds will decrease the utilization of non-renewables sources for obtaining this kind of compounds, contributing to a circular and global economy. However, the success of the circular economy depends on the interest of the industrial sectors in the revalorization of their streams by developing relevant and new business models. Thus, it is necessary to invest in the research of new alternatives that reduce the consumption of non-renewable substrates. In this study is proposed the utilization of a corn milling industry stream to obtain an extract with surfactant capacity. Once the biosurfactant is extracted, the corn milling stream can be commercialized as nutritional media in biotechnological process or as animal feed supplement. Usually this stream is combined with other ingredients obtaining a product namely corn gluten feed or may be sold separately as a liquid protein source for beef and dairy feeding, or as a nutritional pellet binder. Following the productive scheme proposed in this work, the corn milling industry will obtain a biosurfactant extract that could be incorporated in its productive process replacing those chemical detergents, used in some point of its productive chain, or it could be commercialized as a new product of the corn manufacture. The biosurfactants obtained from corn milling industry could replace the chemical surfactants in many formulations, and uses, and it supposes an example of the potential that many industrial streams could offer for obtaining valuable products when they are manage properly.

Keywords: biosurfactantes, circular economy, corn, sustainability

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Authors: Amarachi Delight Onyemachi, Gregory Ikechukwu Onwuka

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The growing consumer trend for natural ingredients, functional foods with health benefits and the perceived risk of carcinogenesis associated with synthetic antioxidants have forced food manufacturers to look for alternatives for producing healthy and safe food. Herbs and spices are cheap, natural and harmless sources of antioxidants which can delay and prevent lipid oxidation of food products and also confer its unique organoleptic properties and health benefits to food products. The Nigerian climate has been proven to be conducive for the production of spices and herbs and is blessed bountifully with a wide range of them. Five selected Nigerian herbs and spices Piper guieense, Xylopia aethopica, Gongronema latifolium and Ocimum gratissimum were evaluated for their ability to act as radical scavengers. The spices were extracted with 80% ethanol and evaluated using total phenolic capacity (TPC), DPPH (1,1-diph diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl radical) ABTS (2,2’azinobis-(3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid)), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), reducing power (RP) assays. The TPC ranged from 5.33 µg GAE/mg (in Gongronema latifolium) to 15.55 µg GAE/mg (in Ocimum gratissimum). The DPPH and ABTS scavenging activity of the extracts ranged from 0.23-0.36 IC50 mg/ml and 2.32-7.25 Trolox equivalent % respectively. The TAC and RP of the extract ranged from 6.73-10.64 µg AAE/mg and 3.52-10.19 µg AAE/mg. The result of percentage yield of the extract ranged from as low as 9.94% in Gongronema latifolium and to as high as 23.85% in Xylopia aethopica. A very strong positive relationship existed between the total antioxidant capacity and total phenolic content of the tested herbs and spices (R2=0.96). All of the extracts exhibited different extent of strong antioxidant activity, high antioxidant activity was found in Ocimum gratissimum and Gongronema latifolium with the least. However, Gongronema latifolium possessed the highest total antioxidant capacity. These data confirm the appreciable antioxidant potentials and high phenolic content of Nigerian herbs and spices, thereby providing justification for their use in dishes and functional foods, prevention of cellular damage caused by free radicals and use as natural antioxidants in the food industry for prevention of lipid oxidation in food products. However, to utilize these natural antioxidants in food products, further analysis and studies of their behaviour in food systems at varying temperature, pH conditions and ionic concentrations should be carried out to displace the use of synthetic antioxidants like BHT and BHA.

Keywords: Antioxidant, free radicals, herbs, phenolic, spices

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Authors: Nawal Al Musayeib, Musarat Amina, Perwez Alam

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Plectranthus barbatus Andrews (Lamiaceae) is the most common species of genus Plectranthus. It is used for treating various ailments. In this study, two rare diterpenes 11,14-dihydroxy-8,11,13-abietatrien-7-one (1) and 12-hydroxyabieta-8(14),9(11),12-trien-7-one (2) were isolated for the first time from P. barbatus. Their chemical structures were verified utilizing various spectroscopic experiments. The effect of diterpenes against undifferentiated/anaplastic thyroid cancer cell line (FRO) was evaluated and they were quantitatively analysed using HPTLC method. The two diterpenes were found to be cytotoxic, however compound 1 showed significant cytotoxic effects where 95% reduction in the cell viability was observed in different time intervals. The quantity of compound 1 and compound 2 in PBCE were found to be 2.04 and15.97 μg/mg, respectively of dried weight of the extract.

Keywords: abietatrien, cancer, diterpenes, Plectranthus barbatus

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Authors: Disaya Jaroensattayatham

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Nowadays, infectious diseases are prevalent and severe health problems as they render the increment of casualty, illness, and global economic recession. Along with the emergence of antimicrobial resistance, the potency of typically used antibiotics can be affected to a considerable degree. As a result, unorthodox antibiotics have become an urgent issue in the pharmaceutical field. Piper betle L., known as betle leaf, has been used for many purposes, such as a traditional home remedy, and has shown its ability in inhibiting bacteria as well as fungus. Thus, in this study, the investigation of antimicrobial activities of the Piper betle L. extracts was carried out using the Agar disk-diffusion method and Broth microdilution, aiming to evaluate and determine its efficacy to inhibit bacterial and fungal growth of Staphylococcus aureus, Salmonella typhi, and Candida albicans. In the agar disk-diffusion test, the extracts of Piper betle L. gave the maximum zone of inhibition of 15.1 mm (S. aureus), 7.7 mm (S. typhi), and 11.7 mm (C. albicans), while its MIC values were 1000 µg/ml in S. aureus and greater than 2000 µg/ml in S. typhi and C. albicans. According to the results, the Piper betle L. obtains an antimicrobial activity and shows a higher effect towards gram-positive bacteria than gram-negative bacteria. To determine the mechanism behind its ability, more research is needed to be performed in the future.

Keywords: antimicrobial activity, Candida albicans, Piper betle L., Salmonella typhi, Staphylococcus aureus

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Authors: Nickson Kipng’etich Lang’at, Thomas Thoruwa, John Abraham, John Wanyoko

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Green tea is made from the top two leaves and buds of a shrub, Camellia sinensis, of the family Theaceae and the order Theales. The green tea leaves are picked and immediately sent to be dried or steamed to prevent fermentation. Fluid bed drying technique is a common drying method used in drying green tea because of its ease in design and construction and fluidization of fine tea particles. Major problems in this method are significant loss of chemical content of the leaf and green appearance of tea, retention of high moisture content in the leaves and bed channeling and defluidization. The energy associated with the drying technology has been shown to be a vital factor in determining the quality of green tea. As part of the implementation, prototype dryer was built that facilitated sequence of operations involving steaming, cooling, pre-drying and final drying. The major findings of the project were in terms of quality characteristics of tea leaves and energy consumption during processing. The optimal design achieved a moisture content of 4.2 ± 0.84%. With the optimum drying temperature of 100 ºC, the specific energy consumption was 1697.8 kj.Kg^-1 and evaporation rate of 4.272 x 10^-4 Kg.m^-2.s^-1. The energy consumption in a fluidized system can be further reduced by focusing on energy saving designs.

Keywords: evaporation rate, fluid bed dryer, maceration, specific energy consumption

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Authors: Darsh N. Patel, Eric Olson

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Fractals can be found everywhere, whether it be the shape of a leaf or a system of blood vessels. Fractals are used to help study and understand different physical and mathematical processes; however, their artistic nature is also beautiful to simply explore. This project explores fractals generated by a cubically convergent extension to Newton's method. With this iteration as a starting point, a complex plane spanning from -2 to 2 is created with a color wheel mapped onto it. Next, the polynomial whose roots the fractal will generate from is established. From the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, it is known that any polynomial has as many roots (counted by multiplicity) as its degree. When generating the fractals, each root will receive its own color. The complex plane can then be colored to indicate the basins of attraction that converge to each root. From a computational point of view, this project’s code identifies which points converge to which roots and then obtains fractal images. A zoom path into the fractal was implemented to easily visualize the self-similar structure. This path was obtained by selecting keyframes at different magnifications through which a path is then interpolated. Using parallel processing, many images were generated and condensed into a video. This project illustrates how practical techniques used for scientific visualization can also have an artistic side.

Keywords: fractals, cubic method, Julia programming language, basin of attraction

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Authors: Fatima Mokeddem

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The phonocardiogram signal (PCG) is a physiological signal that reflects heart mechanical activity, is a promising tool for curious researchers in this field because it is full of indications and useful information for medical diagnosis. PCG segmentation is a basic step to benefit from this signal. Therefore, this paper presents an algorithm that serves the separation of heart sounds and heart murmurs in case they exist in order to use them in several applications and heart sounds analysis. The separation process presents here is founded on three essential steps filtering, envelope detection, and heart sounds segmentation. The algorithm separates the PCG signal into S1 and S2 and extract cardiac murmurs.

Keywords: phonocardiogram signal, filtering, Envelope, Detection, murmurs, heart sounds

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Authors: Sarra Senhadji, Imene Benzeguimi, Zohra Yagoub

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Big Data represents the recent technology of manipulating voluminous and unstructured data sets over multiple sources. Therefore, NOSQL appears to handle the problem of unstructured data. Association rules mining is one of the popular techniques of data mining to extract hidden relationship from transactional databases. The algorithm for finding association dependencies is well-solved with Map Reduce. The goal of our work is to reduce the time of generating of frequent itemsets by using Map Reduce and NOSQL database oriented document. A comparative study is given to evaluate the performances of our algorithm with the classical algorithm Apriori.

Keywords: Apriori, Association rules mining, Big Data, Data Mining, Hadoop, MapReduce, MongoDB, NoSQL

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Authors: Samashi Munaweera

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Cancer stem cells (CSC) are responsible for the initiation, extensive proliferation and metastasis of cancer. CSCs, including breast cancer stem cells (bCSCs) have a capacity to generate chemo and radiotherapy resistance heterogeneous population of cells. Over-expressed ABCB1 has been reported as a main reason for drug resistance of CSCs via activating drug efflux pumps by creating pores in the cell membrane. The overall efficiency of chemotherapeutic agents might be enhanced by blocking the ABCB protein efflux pump in the CSC membrane. There is an urgent need to search for persuasive natural drugs which can target CSCs. Anti-cancer properties of Hylocereus undatus on cancer CSCs have not yet been studied. In the present study, the anti-cancer effects of the peel and flesh of H. undatus fruit on bCSCs were evaluated with the aim of developing a marketable anti-cancer nutraceutical formulation. The flesh and peel of H. undatus were freeze-dried and sequentially extracted into four different solvents (hexane, chloroform, ethyl acetate and ethanol). All extracts (eight extracts) were dried under reduced pressure, and different concentrations (12.5-400 µg/mL) were treated on bCSCs isolated from a triple-negative chemo-resistant breast cancer phenotype (MDA-MB-231 cells). Anti-proliferative effects of all extracts and paclitaxel (positive control) were determined by a colorimetric assay (WST-1 based). Since peel-chloroform (IC50= 54.8 µg/mL) and flesh-ethyl acetate (IC50= 150.5 µg/mL) extras exerted a potent anti-proliferative effect at 72 h post-incubation, a combinatorial formulation (CF) was developed with the most active peel-chloroform extract and 20 µg/mL of verapamil (a known ABCB1 drug efflux pump blocker) first time in the world. Anti-proliferative effects and pro-apoptotic effects of CF were confirmed by estimating activated caspase3 and caspase7 levels and apoptotic morphological features in the CF-treated bCSCs compared to untreated and only verapamil (20 µg/mL) treated bCSCs, and CF treated normal mammary epithelial cells (MCF-10A). The antiproliferative effects of CF (16.4 µg/mL) are greater than paclitaxel (19.2 µg/mL) and three folds greater than peel-chloroform extract (IC50= 54.8 µg/mL) on bCSCs while exerting less effects on normal cells (> 400 µg/mL). Collectively, CF can be considered as a potential initiative of a nutraceutical formulation that can target CSCs.

Keywords: breast cancer stem cells (bCSCs), Hylocereus undatus, combinatorial formulation (CF), ABCB 1 protein, verapamil

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Authors: Sami Ali Metwally, Bedour Helmy Abou-Leila, Hussien I.Abdel-Shafy

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The work was carried out at the greenhouse of National Research Centre, Pot experiment was carried out during of 2020 and 2021 seasons aimed to study the effect of two types of water (two recycling gray water treatments((SMR (Sequencing Batch Reactor) and MBR(Membrane Biology Reactor) and three watering intervals 15, 20 and 25 days on Syangonium plants growth. Examination of data cleared that, (MBR) recorded increase in vegetative growth parameters, osmotic pressure, transpiration rate chlorophyll a,b,carotenoids and carbohydrate)in compared with SBR.As for water, intervalsthe highest values of most growth parameters were obtained from plants irrigated with after (20 days) compared with other treatments.15 days irrigation intervals recorded significantly increased in osmotic pressure, transpiration rate and photosynthetic pigments, while carbohydrate values recorded decreased. Interaction between water type and water intervals(SBR) recorded the highest values of most growth parameters by irrigation after 20 days. While the treatment (MBR)and irrigated after 25 days showed the highest values on leaf area and leaves fresh weight compared with other treatments.

Keywords: grey water, water intervals, Syngonium plant, recycling water, vegetative growth

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Authors: S. Buloyan, V. Mamikonyan, H. Hakobyan, H. Harutyunyan, H. Gasparyan

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The liver is the strongest regenerating organ of the organism, and even with 2/3 surgically removed, it can regenerate completely. Hence, liver cirrhosis may only develop when the regenerating system is off. We present the results of a comparative study of structural and functional characteristics of rat liver tissue under the conditions of toxic liver cirrhosis development, induced by carbon tetrachloride, and its prevention/treatment by natural compounds with antioxidant and immune stimulating action. Studies were made on Wister rats, weighing 120~140 g. Grape seeds extracts, separately and in combination with well known anticirrhotic drug ursodeoxycholic acid (ursodiol) have demonstrated effectiveness in prevention of liver cirrhosis development and its treatment.

Keywords: carbon tetrachloride, GSE, liver cirrhosis, prevention, treatment

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Authors: Nadir Ali Rind, Özlem Aksoy, Muhammad Umar Dahot, Salih Dikilitaş, Muhammad Rafiq, Burçak Tütünoğlu

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Melia azedarach L. is freshly fruited small to medium sized tree native to China and North western India. It is growing in Pakistan and Turkey in various areas facing great environmental changes to maintain its survival. The species is valued for its high quality wood, medicinal, ornamental and shade purposes. The present work was aimed to estimate the genetic variation among the populations of Melia azedarach L. leaf samples that were collected from five different locations of Turkey and three different areas of Pakistan. These populations were chosen on the random bases by applying RAPD primers in order to construct a dendogram using UPGMA method to show genetic diversity. After that appropriate conservation strategies were suggested. 14 primers producing polymorphic and monomorphic bands were analyzed. Genetic distances were calculated for all the species studied by RAPD-PCR methods. According to the results the lowest genetic identity values and the highest genetic polymorphic values were determined. It is observed that there was a clear split among populations from different areas in Turkey and Pakistan. These differences may be due to eco-geographical association with genetic variation and should be conserved to retain the genetic variation of the species.

Keywords: melia azedarach L., genetic diversity, conservation, RAPD-PCR, medicinal plant

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Authors: E. O. Adeleye

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Field experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of soil tillage techniques and poultry manure application on the soil properties and yam (Dioscorea rotundata) performance in Ondo, southwestern Nigeria for two farming seasons. Five soil tillage techniques, namely ploughing (P), ploughing plus harrowing (PH), manual ridging (MR), manual heaping (MH) and zero-tillage (ZT) each combined with and without poultry manure at the rate of 10 tha-1 were investigated. Data were obtained on soil properties, nutrient uptake, growth and yield of yam. Soil moisture content, bulk density, total porosity and post harvest soil chemical characteristics were significantly (p>0.05) influenced by soil tillage-manure treatments. Addition of poultry manure to the tillage techniques in the study increased soil total porosity, soil moisture content and reduced soil bulk density. Poultry manure improved soil organic matter, total nitrogen, available phosphorous, exchangeable Ca, k, leaf nutrients content of yam, yam growth and tuber yield relative to tillage techniques plots without poultry manure application. It is concluded that the possible deleterious effect of tillage on soil properties, growth and yield of yam on an alfisol in southwestern Nigeria can be reduced by combining tillage with poultry manure.

Keywords: poultry manure, tillage, soil chemical properties, yield

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Authors: Angel Champion

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Chemotherapy and radiation use an acidified approach to induce apoptosis, which only kills mature cancer cells while resulting in gene and cell damage with significant levels of toxicity in tumor-affected tissues and organs. The acid approach, where the cells exterminated are not differentiated, induces the disappearance of white blood cells from the blood. This increases susceptibility to infection in severe forms of cancer spread. However, chemotherapy and radiation cannot kill cancer stem cells that metastasize, being the leading cause of 98% of cancer fatalities. With over 12 million new cancer cases symptomatic each year, including common malignancies such as Hepatocellular Carcinoma (HCC), this study aims to assess the bioactive constituents and phytochemical composition of Taraxacum Officinale (Dandelion). This analysis enables pharmaceutical quality and potency to be applied to studies on cancer cell proliferation and apoptosis. A phytochemical screening is carried out to identify the antioxidant components of Dandelion root, stem, and flower extract. The constituents tested for are phlorotannins, carbohydrates, glycosides, saponins, flavonoids, alkaloids, sterols, triterpenes, and anthraquinone glycosides. To conserve the existing phenolic compounds, a portion of the constituent tests will be examined with an acid, alcohol, or aqueous solvent. As a result, the qualitative and quantitative variations within the Dandelion extract that measure uniform effective potency are vital to the conformity for producing medicinal products. These medicines will be constructed with a consistent, uniform composition that physicians can use to control and effectively eradicate malignant diseases safely. Taraxacum Officinale's phytochemical composition comprises a highly-graded potency due to present bioactive contents that will essentially drive out malignant disease within the human body. Its high potency rate is powerful enough to eliminate both mature cancer cells and cancer stem cells without the cell and gene damage induced by chemotherapy and radiation. Correspondingly, the high margins of cancer mortality on a global scale are mitigated. This remarkable contribution to modern therapeutics will essentially optimize the margins of natural products and their derivatives, which account for 50% of pharmaceuticals in modern therapeutics, while preventing the adverse effects of radiation and chemotherapy drugs.

Keywords: antioxidant, apoptosis, metastasize, phytochemical, proliferation, potency

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Authors: Medhat Tawfik, Ezzat Abd El Lateef, Bahr Amany, Mohamed Magda

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Applying organic farming systems in biosaline agriculture is unconventional approach for sustainable use of marginal soil and desert land for planting non-traditional halophytic crops such as Leptochloa fusca, Kochia indica, Sporobolus virginicus and Spartina patens. These plants are highly salt tolerant C4 halophytic forage plants grown well in coastal salt marsh. These halophytic plant will take important place in the farming system, especially in the coastal areas and salt-affected land. We can call it environmentally smart crops because they ensure food security, contribute to energy security, guarantee environmental sustainability, and mitigate the negative impacts of climate change. Organic Agriculture is the most important and widely practiced agro-ecological farming system. It is claimed to be the most sustainable approach and long term adaptation strategy. It promotes soil fertility and diversity at all levels and makes soils less susceptible to erosion. It is also reported to be climate change resilience farming systems as it promotes the proper management of soil, water, biodiversity and local knowledge and provides producers with ecologically sound management decisions. A field experiment was carried out at the Model Farm of National Research Centre, El Tour, South Sinai to study the impact of (Mycorrhiza 1kg/fed., charcoal 4 tons/fed., chicken manure 5 tons/fed., in addition to control treatment) on some growth characters, photosynthetic pigments content, and some physiological aspects i.e. prolind and soluble carbohydrates content, succulence and osmotic pressure values, as well as nutritive values i.e. Crude fat (CF), Acid detergent fiber (ADF), Neutral detergent fiber (NDF), Ether extract (EE) and Nitrogen-free extract (NFE) of five halophytic plant species (Leptochloa fusca, Kochia indica, Sporobolus virginicus and Spartina patens). Our results showed that organic fertilizer treatment enhanced all the previous character as compared with control with superiority to chicken manure over the other treatments.

Keywords: organic agriculture, halophytic plants, saline environment, water security

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Authors: Preeti Panthari, Harsha Kharkwal

Abstract:

Myrica nagi belongs to Myricaceae family. It is known for its therapeutic use since ancient times. The leaves were extracted with methanol and further fractioned with different solvents with increasing polarity. The n-butanol fraction of methanol extract was passed through celite, on separation through silica gel column chromatography yielded ten fractions. For the first time we report isolation of Caffeic acid from n-butanol fraction of Myrica nagi leaves in Chloroform: methanol (70:30) fraction. The mobile phase used for analysis in HPLC was Methanol: water (60:40) at the flow rate of 1 ml/min at wavelength of 280 nm. The retention time was 2.66 mins.

Keywords: Myrica nagi, column chromatography, retention time, caffeic acid

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Authors: Salhi Nesrine, Salama M. El-Darier, Halilat M. El-Taher

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The present study aimed to investigate the effect of two type of soil (clay and sandy soils) in the potential allelopathic effects of Artemisia herba-alba, Oudneya africana crude powder on some growth parameters and phytomass of two weeds (Bromus tectorum and Melilotus indica) under laboratory conditions (pot experiment). The experimental findings have reported that the donor species crude powder concentrations were suppressing to shoot length (SL), root length (RL), fresh and dry weight of shoot and root (SFw, RFw, SDw and RDw, respectively and the leaf number (LN)) in both soil types and caused a gradual reduction particularly when they are high. However, the reduction degree was varied and species, concentration dependent. The suppressive effect of all the eight donors on the two weedy species was in the following order Bromus tectorum> Melilotus indica. Generally, the growth parameters of two recipient species were significantly decreased with the increase of each of the donor species crude powder concentration levels. Concerning the type of sol the t-test indicated that the difference was insignificant between clay and sandy soils.

Keywords: allelopathy, soil, Artemisia herba-alba, Oudneya africana, growth, weeds

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Authors: S. Boonlertnirun, R. Suvannasara, K. Boonlertnirun

Abstract:

Hypoxia has negative effects on growth and crop yield, its severity is so varied depending on crop growth stages, duration of hypoxia and crop species. The objective was to evaluate the sensitive growth stage and the duration of hypoxia negatively affecting growth and yield of waxy corn. Pot experiment was conducted using a split plot in randomized complete block with 3 growth stages: V3 (3-4 true leaves), V7 (7-8 true leaves), and R1 (silking stage), and three hypoxic durations: 6, 9, and 12 days, in an open–ended outdoor greenhouse during January to March 2013. The results revealed that different growth stages had significantly (p < 0.5) different responses to hypoxia, seeing that the sensitive growth stage affecting plant height, yield and yield components was mostly detected in V7 growth stage whereas leaf greenness and days to silking were sensitive to hypoxia at R1 growth stage. Different hypoxic durations significantly affected the yield and yield components, hypoxic duration of twelve days showed the most negative effect greater than the others. In this present study, it can be concluded that waxy corn plants were waterlogged at V7 growth stage for twelve days had the most negative effect on yield and yield components.

Keywords: hypoxia duration, waxy corn, growth stage, Zea mays L.

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Authors: Aminu Mohammed, Shahidul Islam

Abstract:

Aframomum melegueta K.Schum commonly known as Grains of Paradise has been a popularly used spice in most of the African food preparation. Available data have shown that ethyl acetate fraction from crude ethanolic extract exhibited α-amylase and α-glucosidase inhibitory actions, improved pancreatic β-cell damage and ameliorated insulin resistance in diabetic rats. Additionally, 6-gingerol, 6-shogaol, 6-paradol and oleanolic acid are shown to be the compounds responsible for the antidiabetic action of A. melegueta. However, detail antioxidant potential of this spice in a diabetic animal model has not yet been reported. Thus, the present study investigates the effect of oral consumption of A. melegueta fruit on the in vivo antioxidant status of type 2 diabetes (T2D) model of rats. T2D was induced in rats by feeding a 10% fructose solution ad libitum for two weeks followed by a single intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (40 mg/kg body weight (bw)). The animals were orally administered with 150 (DAML) or 300 mg/kg bw (DAMH) of the fraction once daily for four weeks. Data were analyzed by using a statistical software package (SPSS for Windows, version 22, IBM Corporation, NY, USA) using Tukey’s-HSD multiple range post-hoc test. Values were considered significantly different at p < 0.05. According to the data, after four weeks of intervention, diabetic untreated animals showed significantly (p < 0.05) elevation of blood glucose levels. The levels of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) were observed to increase with concomitant reduction of reduced glutathione (GSH) levels in the serum and organs (liver, kidney, heart and pancreas) of diabetic untreated animals. The activities of endogenous antioxidant enzymes (superoxide dismutase, catalase, glutathione peroxidase, and reductase) were greatly reduced in the serum and organs of diabetic untreated animals compared to the normal animals. These alterations were reverted to near-normal after the treatment of A. melegueta fruit in the treated groups (DAML & DAMH) within the study period, especially at the dose of 300 mg/kg bw. This potent antioxidant action may partly be attributed to the presence of the 6-Gingerol, 6-shogaol and 6-paradol are known to possess antioxidant action. The results of our study showed that A. melegueta intake improved the antioxidant status of T2D rats and therefore could be used to ameliorate the diabetes-induced oxidative damage.

Keywords: Aframomum melegueta, antioxidant, ethyl acetate extract, type 2 diabetes

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Authors: M. Bassoui, M. Ferfra, M. Chrayagne

Abstract:

This paper presents a qualitative modeling for the nonlinear B-H curve of the saturable magnetic materials for a transformer with shunts used in the power supply for the magnetron. This power supply is composed of a single phase leakage flux transformer supplying a cell composed of a capacitor and a diode, which double the voltage and stabilize the current, and a single magnetron at the output of the cell. A procedure consisting of a fuzzy clustering method and a rule processing algorithm is then employed for processing the constructed fuzzy modeling rules to extract the qualitative properties of the curve.

Keywords: B(H) curve, fuzzy clustering, magnetron, power supply

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Authors: Supriyono, Sumardiyono, Puti Pertiwi

Abstract:

Crude palm oil (CPO) is a vegetable oil that came from a palm tree bunch. Palm oil tree was known as highest vegetable oil yield. It was grown across Equatorial County, especially in Malaysia and Indonesia. The greenish red color on CPO was came from carotenoid antioxidant, which could be extracted and use separately as functional food and other purposes as antioxidant source. Another antioxidant that also found in CPO is tocopherol. The aim of the research work is to find antioxidant activity on CPO comparing to the synthetic antioxidant that available in a market. On this research work, antioxidant was extracted by using a mixture of acetone and n. hexane, while activity of the antioxidant extract was determine by DPPH method. The extracted matter was shown that their antioxidant activity was about 45% compare to pure tocopherol and beta carotene.

Keywords: antioxidant, , beta carotene, , crude palm oil, , DPPH, , tocopherol

Procedia PDF Downloads 288