Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) layers from silicate/phosphate baths on Ti-6Al-4V for biomedical components: Influence of deposition conditions and surface finishing on dry sliding behaviour

Plasma Electrolytic Oxidation (PEO) layers were produced on Ti-6Al-4V in different conditions, so as to assess the influence of layer structure, current mode, duty cycle and surface finishing on microstructural features and tribological behavior. In DC regime, the double-layer structure (silicate bath followed by phosphate bath) beneficially affected wear resistance. In unipolar pulsed DC (phosphate bath), the wear resistance of single layers improved with increasing duty cycle, due to improved microstructure and adhesion: high duty cycle single layers can be considered an alternative to double-layer deposition. Surface finishing by abrasive blasting with spheroidal glass beads leads to surface roughness decrease and hence to decreased friction and improved wear resistance. The best-performing PEO layers showed promising results in the comparison with reference materials such as CoCrMo (both uncoated and (Ti,Nb)N PVD-coated) and PVD-coated Ti-6Al-4V up to 30 N normal load

Quercetin as a possible complementary agent for early-stage COVID-19: concluding results of a randomized clinical trial

Background: Quercetin, a natural polyphenol with demonstrated broad-spectrum antiviral, anti-inflammatory, and antioxidant properties, has been proposed as an adjuvant for early-stage coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infection. Objective: To explore the possible therapeutic effect of quercetin in outpatients with early-stage mild to moderate symptoms of COVID-19. Methods: This was an open-label randomized controlled clinical trial conducted at the department of medicine, King Edward Medical University, Lahore, PK. Patients were randomized to receive either standard of care (SC) plus an oral quercetin supplement (500 mg Quercetin Phytosome®, 1st week, TDS: 2nd week, BDS) (n = 50, quercetin group) or SC alone (n = 50, control group). Results: After one week of treatment, patients in the quercetin group showed a speedy recovery from COVID-19 as compared to the control group, i.e., 34 patients (vs. 12 in the control group) tested negative for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) (p = 0.0004), and 26 patients (vs. 12 in the control group) had their COVID-19-associated acute symptoms resolved (p = 0.0051). Patients in the quercetin group also showed a significant fall in the serum lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) mean values i.e., from 406.56 ± 183.92 to 257.74 ± 110.73 U/L, p = 0.0001. Quercetin was well-tolerated by all the 50 patients, and no side effects were reported. Conclusion: Our results, suggest the possible therapeutic role of quercetin in early-stage COVID-19, including speedy clearance of SARS-CoV-2, early resolution of the acute symptoms and modulation of the host’s hyperinflammatory response. Clinical Trial Registration: clinicaltrials.gov, identifier NCT04861298

Functional Conservation of the Drosophila gooseberry Gene and Its Evolutionary Alleles

The Drosophila Pax gene gooseberry (gsb) is required for development of the larval cuticle and CNS, survival to adulthood, and male fertility. These functions can be rescued in gsb mutants by two gsb evolutionary alleles, gsb-Prd and gsb-Pax3, which express the Drosophila Paired and mouse Pax3 proteins under the control of gooseberry cis-regulatory region. Therefore, both Paired and Pax3 proteins have conserved all the Gsb functions that are required for survival of embryos to fertile adults, despite the divergent primary sequences in their C-terminal halves. As gsb-Prd and gsb-Pax3 uncover a gsb function involved in male fertility, construction of evolutionary alleles may provide a powerful strategy to dissect hitherto unknown gene functions. Our results provide further evidence for the essential role of cis-regulatory regions in the functional diversification of duplicated genes during evolution

Rapid Determination of Phenol Content in Extra Virgin Olive Oil

A quick extraction methodology was developed to reduce the time usually required to determine the phenol cntent in olive oil. The validity of this method, based on SPE technique, was tested against two other phenole xtraction techniques. The statistical analysis of the analytical data showed that over a phenol content range of 110-550 ug/g oil the proposed method can be a reliable alternative for a rapid extraction of the phenols from olive oil

Day and Night at the Museum: Intangible Computer Interfaces for Public Exhibitions

Computer technologies have been adopted in many different venues, including public exhibitions and museums, as they can easily support the exchange of natural interactions and provide unimaginable exploration tools of masterpieces and exhibits. This has led many to design and implement a plethora of different technologies for the detection, tracking and action recognition of visitors within a museum. Nonetheless, no single approach has been firmly accepted so far, as it typically suffers from the limitation of adopting separate techniques for detecting, tracking and recognizing the actions of visitors. The contribution of this paper is that of filling this gap: we propose a unifying methodology through which all of the abovementioned services can be handled within a museum. Furthermore, such methodology results being: (a) simple to implement, (b) non-invasive and (c) requiring minimal hardware resources. As significant evidence, we present the experimental results drawn from two relevant implementations: Mercator Atlas Robot exhibited at the Poggi Palace Museum of Bologna and Tortellino X-Perience at the World Expo held in Shanghai. Finally, we indicate how the presented approach can be extended to efficiently support any interaction with several visitors simultaneously

Rapid determination of phenol content in extra virgin olive oil

A quick extraction methodology was developed to reduce the time usually required to determine the phenol content in olive oil. The validity of this method, based on SPE technique, was tested against two other phenol extraction techniques.<br /> The statistical analysis of the analytical data showed that over a phenol content range of 110-550 μg/g oil, the proposed method can be a reliable alternative for a rapid extraction of the phenols from olive oil.<br><br>No disponible