Synthesis and photophysical properties of meso‐aminophenyl‐substituted heptamethine dyes as potential leads to new contrast agents

The series of rigidmeso-aminophenyl-substituted heptamethine dyes presented herein exhibit surprisingfluorescence properties, demonstrating larger Stokes shifts when compared with both structurally similar rigidmeso-chlorophenyl and linear heptamethine dyes. Based on their photophysical properties, these are ofconsiderable importance to the development of contrast agents, within biology and medicine

Identifying opportunity areas for cocoa agroforestry in Ghana to meet policy objectives

Ghana is one of the world’s leading cocoa producers. Between 1994 and 2018, the area under cocoa production has nearly ripled. This has increased income, but it has also imposed costs. As rainforests have been converted into land for cocoa farming, habitat for species has decreased and become increasingly fragmented in one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots. Rainforest loss also has huge implications for the ability of land to capture carbon and mitigate climate change globally. Expansion of cocoa farming is expected to aggravate these issues further. To increase income from cocoa, Ghana could expand cocoa plantations but increasing yields on the plantations that it already has would be better for both farmers and the environment. Cocoa yields in Ghana are low and the prices that the crop gets on the global market are poor. This is because most plantations in Ghana are small and run by farmers who often lack the right knowledge, resources and credit to apply management practices, like pruning, pest control and managing soil fertility, that would help them to increase the quality and size of their yields. Climate change is also expected to make lives harder and put the cocoa supply chain at risk by making yields lower than they already are. Agroforestry farming systems are increasingly being proposed as a solution to address these problems and a potential way for the small-holder cocoa farmers of Ghana to improve their livelihoods and for the cocoa sector to maintain a sustainable cocoa supply. Cocoa can be grown in direct sunlight or under shade provided by taller trees. Farmers in Ghana have been advised over the years that shade would harm their cocoa production, but evidence shows that well-managed shade can also benefit it. Shade trees suppress weed growth and provide habitats for predatory species that control insect pests. Growing cocoa under shade trees also helps to create a stable microclimate beneath the canopy. It can also enhance soil fertility and provide farmers with supplemental income when these other trees produce commercially valuable fruits and timber. Most importantly, well-shaded cocoa plantations will experience lower maximum temperatures than are expected from climate change, can store up to 2.5 times more carbon than those that are unshaded and support higher levels of biodiversity that help protect valuable ecosystem services. The types and magnitude of benefits from agroforestry systems for different beneficiaries depend highly on their design and the local context. Shade trees can harbour pests. They can also compete with cocoa for resources like water. This is particularly true in drier areas. High humidity levels under canopies created by other plant species can also foster fungal diseases. These challenges are not to be ignored but, when agroforestry systems are well designed, they are outweighed by the overall benefits in smallholder production systems. Indeed, Ghana is now promoting cocoa agroforestry through national level policies such as the Cocoa and Forests Implementation plan, the Ghana Cocoa Forest REDD+ Programme (GCFRP) and the National Climate-Smart Agriculture and Food Security Action Plan. It is not realistic to establish shaded plantations throughout the southwestern regions of Ghana all at once. The process will need to be staged as there are 2.3 million hectares of plantations and 1.9 million of them currently have little to no shade. Areas where benefits from increased shading will be highest need to be identified and prioritised. This new work looked at the locations of all cocoa plantations in the country and applied cocoa and forest national policy objectives as well as spatially explicit climate change adaptation strategies to implement a transition towards more shaded cocoa farming. Using modelling approaches, the work sought to understand the biodiversity, carbon sequestration and erosion control benefits granted by increased shading being implemented in different locations. Combined, this information generated a map that reveals the areas where the implementation of shading would be most beneficial for achieving a combination of benefits for people, nature and climate. The work shows that establishing appropriately shaded and well-managed plantations in the proposed areas has the potential to protect at least 4,000 tonnes of sediment from erosion each year and store an additional 52 million tonnes of carbon in trees. While shifting to this sort of farming will have some implementation costs and not yield the immediate financial gains that would be expected from more forests being converted into plantations, such a transition can yield significant long-term benefits as smallholder farmers face the challenges presented by a changing climate. When implemented appropriately, it will also enhance ecosystem services that benefit cocoa production, conserve biodiversity and support the livelihoods of farmers. Above and beyond all else, the carbon sequestration benefits granted by shaded plantations have the potential to play a pivotal part in combating climate change. For this to be fully realised, farmers need to be incentivised to adopt agroforestry practices by giving them ownership of the land that they are farming and the trees that grow there. Paying them for the ecosystem services that their land provides would further these incentives by strengthening and diversifying their income too. Beyond the specific situation faced by cocoa farmers in Ghana, this study demonstrates the potential for decision-makers to use spatial planning to understand where, and (partly) how, to implement cocoa agroforestry at scale to meet different objectives

1,8-Substituted anthraquinones, anthrones and bianthrones as potential non-azole leads against fungal infections

The synthesis of a variety of 1,8-substituted anthraquinones, anthrones and bianthrones and their potential as antifungal agents is evaluated. Preliminary screening against Schizosaccharomyces pombe (S. pombe), a fission yeast, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae (S. cerevisiae), a budding yeast, is reported. Both these yeast species demonstrate close homologue to a number of pathogenic fungi. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Effects of Smoking and Cessation on Subclinical Arterial Disease: A Substudy of a Randomized Controlled Trial

The mechanisms by which smoking cessation reduces cardiovascular disease risk are unclear. We evaluated longitudinal changes in carotid intima-media thickness among current smokers enrolled in a prospective, randomized smoking cessation clinical trial.Subjects were enrolled in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of 5 smoking cessation pharmacotherapies and underwent carotid ultrasonography with carotid intima-media thickness measurement. Subjects were classified as continuously abstinent (biochemically confirmed abstinence at 6 months, 1 year, and 3 years post-quit attempt), intermittently abstinent (reported smoking at one of the three time points), or smoked continuously (reported smoking at all three time points). The primary endpoint was the absolute change (mm) in carotid intima-media thickness (ΔCIMT(max)) before randomization and 3 years after the target quit date. Pearson correlations were calculated and multivariable regression models (controlling for baseline CIMT(max) and research site) were analyzed. Among 795 subjects (45.2 ± 10.6 years old, 58.5% female), 189 (23.8%) were continuously abstinent, 373 (46.9%) smoked continuously, and 233 (29.3%) were abstinent intermittently. There was a greater increase in carotid intima-media thickness among subjects who were continuously abstinent than among those who smoked continuously (p = 0.020), but not intermittently (p = 0.310). Antihypertensive medication use (p = 0.001) and research site (p<0.001) independently predicted ΔCIMTmax--not smoking status. The greatest increase in carotid intima-media thickness among continuous abstainers was related to increases in body-mass index (p = 0.043).Smoking status did not independently predict ΔCIMT(max); increasing body-mass index and antihypertensive medication use were the most important independent predictors. The rapid reduction in cardiovascular disease events observed with smoking cessation is unlikely to be mediated by changes in subclinical atherosclerosis burden.ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00332644

Electroanalytical properties of chlorophenol red at disposable carbon electrodes: Implications for Escherichia coli detection

The use of coliforms and Escherichia coli as indicator species for assessing the quality of water is well established and a large variety of methods based on β-galactosidase (B-GAL) activity, inherent to the microbes within this classification, have arisen to enable their detection and enumeration. Chlorophenol red (CPR) is widely used as a chromogenic label, but its capacity for translation to electroanalytical devices has yet to be fully explored. The CPR moiety is capable of undergoing oxidation at carbon substrates (+0.7 V) giving rise to a variety of phenolic intermediates. Electrochemical, XPS and enzymatic techniques were employed to characterise the underpinning chemistry and the intermediate identified as a 1,2-quinone derivative in which the chlorine substituent is retained. The latter was found to accumulate at the electrode and, in contrast to the parent CPR, was found to be detected at a significantly less positive potential (+0.3 V). Bacterial hydrolysis of a CPR labelled substrate was demonstrated with the 1,2-quinone oxidation product found to accumulate at the electrode and detected using square wave voltammetry. Proof of concept for the efficacy of the alternative electrode pathway was established through the detection of E.coli after an incubation time of 2.5 h with no interference from the labelled substrates

N-Alkylated Linear Heptamethine Polyenes as Potent Non-Azole Leads against Candida Albicans Fungal Infections

In this study, eighteen heptamethine dyes were synthesised and their antifungal activities were evaluated against three clinically relevant yeast species.. The eighteen dyes were placed within classes based on their core subunit i.e. 2,3,3-trimethylindolenine (5a-f), 1,1,2-trimethyl-1H-benzo[e]indole (6a-f), or 2-methylbenzothiazole (7a-f). The results presented herein imply that the three families of cyanine dyes, in particular compounds 5a-f, show high potential as selective scaffolds to treat C. albicans infections. This opens up the opportunity for further optimisation and investigation of this class compounds for potential antifungal treatment

Interoceptive sensitivity deficits in women recovered from bulimia nervosa

Self-report studies suggest that patients with bulimia nervosa (BN) evidence difficulties with interoceptive awareness. Indeed, interoceptive deficits may persist after recovery of BN and may be a biological trait that predisposes symptom development in BN. However, no studies to date have directly assessed interoceptive sensitivity, or accuracy in detecting and perceiving internal body cues, in patients with or recovered from BN. Nine women who had recovered from BN and 10 healthy control women completed the Heart Beat Perception Task (HBPT) in which individuals were required to estimate the number of heartbeats between intervals of time. Accuracy scores were compared between groups. Significant differences were found between the groups on the HBPT ((F 1,19)=7.78, p=013, Cohen's d=1.16) when controlling for age. These results suggest that deficits in interoceptive sensitivity are present in individuals recovered from BN. Thus interoceptive deficits may be one factor that bridges the gap between brain dysfunction and symptom presentation in BN. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd

Mind wandering in dysphoria

Mind-wandering shares a number of important similarities with thinking in depression. This experiment examines whether mind-wandering provides a useful marker of cognition in dysphoria during a word learning task. Dysphoria was associated with more accessible mind-wandering when attempting to encode verbal items. In addition, in the dysphoric population, periods when the mind wandered led to greater decoupling from task-relevant processing as indexed by slower response times, and greater physiological arousal, as indexed by faster heart rates. In the general population, periods of mind-wandering when attempting to encode information were associated with poor retrieval and high skin conductance. Finally, the extent to which mind-wandering was associated with poor retrieval was associated with an individuals' latency to retrieve specific autobiographical memories from outside the laboratory. These results provide strong evidence for the utility of mind-wandering as a marker for depressive thinking and suggest a number of important implications for therapy for depression