Toxicity Potential of Aqueous Kava Extracts on Liver Function Tests in Rats

Kava, prepared as the traditional aqueous infusion, was tested in the rat for possible effects on liver function tests. Extracts were administered in dosages containing 200 or 500 mg of the active kavalactones per kg for two or four weeks. Sera were assayed for four enzymes that are markers of liver toxicity and liver homogenates for malondiadehyde formation that indicates changes in lipid peroxidation. The data showed that none of the enzymes, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, alkaline phosphatase, and lactate dehydrogenase, nor malondialdehyde levels were elevated, in fact in some cases they were significantly reduced, suggesting the lack of a toxic effect on the liver by kava

Enhanced alpha-amylase production using Streptomyces gancidicus ASD by process optimization

845-852The present study was focused on purification and optimization of amylase from marine actinomycetes. Among 101 actinomycetes isolates from Andaman & Nicobar islands, Streptomyces sp gancidicus_ASD was isolated and further studied. The enzyme activity was studied at various physical parameters like temperature, pH, carbon source, Nitrogen source, metal ions, NaCl concentration etc. by maintaining all the factors with 100 ml of crude extract. Also, media optimization with response surface methodology was used to ameliorate the bioprocess economics. A central composite design was conducted to optimize the four selected factors. Statistical analyses of the data of model fitting were done by using Design expert 10.0 (stat-Ease). Results show a maximum predicted amylase yield of 11460.34 IU/ml when using 1.05% sucrose, 0.608% beef extract, 7.1 pH and 40.35 °C temperature. The predicted value is approximately 1.24-fold much higher than the original production (9248 IU/mL) determined by the conventional one-factor-at-a-time optimization method which can be applied in bioprocess for increased amylase yield

The Impact of Investor Protection Law on Corporate Policy: Evidence from the Blue Sky Laws

Recent studies have debated the impact of investor protection laws on firms’ corporate policies. I exploit the passage of state investor protection statutes (“blue sky laws”) in the U.S. in the early 20th century to estimate the effects of investor protection law on firm financing decisions and investment activity. Regression estimates indicate that the passage of investor protection statutes causes firms to pay out greater dividends, issue more equity, and grow in size. The introduction of investor protection law is also associated with improvements in operating performance and market valuations. Additional analysis suggests that alternative hypotheses for the measured changes in corporate policy and performance have limited explanatory power. Overall, the evidence is strongly supportive of theoretical models which predict that investor protection laws have a significant impact on firm financing and investment policy.Corporate Governance; Investor Protection; Law and Finance; law; finance; empirical corporate finance; financial institutions;

Study on Segmentation and Global Motion Estimation in Object Tracking Based on Compressed Domain

Object tracking is an interesting and needed procedure for many real time applications. But it is a challenging one, because of the presence of challenging sequences with abrupt motion occlusion, cluttered background and also the camera shake. In many video processing systems, the presence of moving objects limits the accuracy of Global Motion Estimation (GME). On the other hand, the inaccuracy of global motion parameter estimates affects the performance of motion segmentation. In the proposed method, we introduce a procedure for simultaneous object segmentation and GME from block-based motion vector (MV) field, motion vector is refined firstly by spatial and temporal correlation of motion and initial segmentation is produced by using the motion vector difference after global motion estimation