Aphrodisiac Effects of Red Ginger (Zingiber Officinale Rosc. Red Clone) Essential Oil and Essential Oil Free Etanolic Extract in Male Rats

Nowadays, many young men experience sexual disfunction due to many factors. Red ginger is traditionally used to solve problems related to sexual disfunction. Oleoresin compound of red ginger has been reported to function as aphrodisiac. This research aims to compare aphrodisiac effect of essential oil and essential oil free extract in male rats. Red ginger essential oil was obtained by destilation while the red ginger free of essential oil was extracted using ethanol 70%. Rats were divided into five groups, administered by : etanolic extract suspension (140 mg/kg BM), essential oil emultion (15 μl/kg BM), pasak bumi extract suspension as positive control (500mg/kg BM), red ginger powder suspension as positive control (2,5 g/kg BM), and CMC Na 1% suspension as negative control. All rats were treated orally for 32 days. Parameters measured were introduction, climbing, and coitus frequency. The result showed that essential oil increased libido but its activity was lower than pasak bumi. Etanolic extract of red ginger and red ginger powder did not increase libido and sexual activity as compared with negative control

Racial disparities in modifiable risk factors and statin usage in Black patients with familial hypercholesterolemia

Background Black men and women are at higher risk for, and suffer greater morbidity and mortality from, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) compared with adults of European Ancestry (EA). Black patients with familial hypercholesterolemia are at particularly high risk for ASCVD complications because of lifelong exposure to elevated levels of low-density-lipoprotein cholesterol. Methods and Results This retrospective study analyzed ASCVD prevalence and risk factors in 808 adults with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia from 5 US-based lipid clinics, and compared findings in Black versus EA patients. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to determine the strongest predictors of ASCVD as a function of race. No significant difference was noted in the prevalence of ASCVD in Black versus EA patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (39% versus 32%, respectively

Addressing climate change with behavioral science: a global intervention tournament in 63 countries

Effectively reducing climate change requires marked, global behavior change. However, it is unclear which strategies are most likely to motivate people to change their climate beliefs and behaviors. Here, we tested 11 expert-crowdsourced interventions on four climate mitigation outcomes: beliefs, policy support, information sharing intention, and an effortful tree-planting behavioral task. Across 59,440 participants from 63 countries, the interventions’ effectiveness was small, largely limited to nonclimate skeptics, and differed across outcomes: Beliefs were strengthened mostly by decreasing psychological distance (by 2.3%), policy support by writing a letter to a future-generation member (2.6%), information sharing by negative emotion induction (12.1%), and no intervention increased the more effortful behavior—several interventions even reduced tree planting. Last, the effects of each intervention differed depending on people’s initial climate beliefs. These findings suggest that the impact of behavioral climate interventions varies across audiences and target behaviors

Sequence-Selective Binding of Phenazinium Dyes Phenosafranin and Safranin O to Guanine-Cytosine Deoxyribopolynucleotides: Spectroscopic and Thermodynamic Studies

The sequence selectivity of the DNA binding of the phenazinium dyes phenosafranin and safranin O have been investigated with four sequence-specific deoxyribopolynucleotides from spectroscopic and calorimetric studies. The alternating guanine-cytosine sequence selectivity of the dyes has been revealed from binding affinity values, circular dichroism, thermal melting, competition dialysis, and calorimetric results. The binding affinities of both the dyes to the polynucleotides were of the order of 105 M-1, but the values were higher for the guanine-cytosine polynucleotides over adenine-thymine ones. Phenosafranin had a higher binding affinity compared to safranin O. Isothermal titration calorimetric studies revealed that the binding reactions were exothermic and favored by negative enthalpy and predominantly large positive entropy contributions in all cases except poly(dA) · poly(dT) where the profile was anomalous. Although charged, nonpolyelectrolytic contribution was revealed to be dominant to the free energy of binding. The negative heat capacity values obtained from the temperature dependence of enthalpy changes, which were higher for phenosafranin compared to safranin O, suggested significant hydrophobic contribution to the binding process. In aggregate, the data presents evidence for the alternating guanine-cytosine base pair selectivity of these phenazinium dyes and a stronger binding of phenosafranin over safranin O