Chemistry and antigerminative activity of essential oils and monoterpenoids from Mediterranean plants

The Mediterranean flora is characterized by the abundance of aromatic plants. The feature differentiating these plants from all others, in spite of the fact that they belong to many different families, is the production of chemically related secondary compounds, the low molecular weight and volatile isoprenoids. This remarkable presence of aromatic species is important in determining the allelopathic potential within this ecosystem. Such plants make a significant contribution to phryganic Mediterranean ecosystems both in terms of species number and biomass. Thus, the essential oils play an important role in this ecological context. Mediating various processes in the frame of an ecosystem, they become indirectly beneficial to the plants, considering their involvement in processes of adaptative character in Mediterranean ecosystem . For this reason, our research group carried out a series of studies on the possible allelopathic properties of aromatic plants that, being rich in active principles, are considered a primary source of potential allelochemicals.The focus of this overview is direct to have an overall idea about the chemistry and antigerminative activity of essential oils of some Mediterranean aromatic plants and their main constituent

MANAJEMEN PEMBINAAN PERPUSTAKAAN KELURAHAN DI KOTA BANDUNG

Dinas Perpustakaan dan Kearsipan (Dispusip) Kota Bandung merupakan suatu bentuk dari perpustakaan umum yang memiliki fungsi membina perpustakaan. Pemberdayaan perpustakaan kelurahan di Kota Bandung saat ini belum terealisasi sesuai dengan jumlah kelurahan yang terdapat di kota Bandung sebanyak 151 kelurahan. Perpustakaan kelurahan dapat menjalankan fungsinya dengan baik sesuai dengan fungsi perpustakaan dengan penerapan fungsi manajemen perpustakaan. Masalah yang menjadi kajian pada penelitian ini bagaimana implementasi manajemen pembinaan perpustakaan kelurahan di Kota Bandung oleh Dispusip Kota Bandung. Tujuan penelitian ini yaitu untuk mendeskripsikan mengenai perencanaan, pengorganisasian, penggerakan dan pengawasan pembinaan perpustakaan kelurahan oleh Dispusip Kota Bandung. Metode yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah metode kualitatif dengan pendekatan studi kasus. Partisipan dalam penelitian ini terdiri atas tiga informan yang bertindak sebagai pustakawan dan key informan sebagai Kepala Bidang Pengembangan Perpustakaan dan Kearsipan menggunakan teknik purposive sampling. Instrumen penelitian yang digunakan adalah wawancara, observasi dan studi dokumentasi. Teknik analisis data yang digunakan adalah data reduction, data display, dan conclusion drawing (verification). Berdasarkan hasil penelitian yaitu sebuah konstuksi model manajemen pembinaan perpustakaan kelurahan yang menunjukkan bahwa kegiatan pembinaan perpustakaan kelurahan oleh Dispusip Kota Bandung relevan dengan fungsi manajemen. Fungsi perencanaan, pengorganisasian, penggerakan kegiatan manajemen pembinaan perpustakaan kelurahan di Kota Bandung terealisasi cukup baik. Namun pada fungsi pengawasan belum berjalan secara optimal, hal ini dikarenakan oleh keterbatasan sumber daya manusia yang dimiliki oleh Dispusip Kota Bandung. Program pembinaan ini diharapkan dapat mewujudkan penyelenggaraan perpustakaan kelurahan dan dapat memberikan kontribusi terhadap perbaikan/ penyempurnaan manajemen pembinaan perpustakaan oleh Dispusip Kota Bandung. ;--- Dinas Perpustakaan dan Kearsipan (Dispusip) Kota Bandung is a form of public library, which function is to develop urban village libraries. Currently, the empowerment of urban village libraries in 151 village in Bandung City is not realized yet. Urban village libraries can perform its functions properly in accordance with the implementation of library management functions. The problem of this study is how Dispusip Kota Bandung manages the implementation of urban village libraries coaching in Bandung City. The purpose of this study is to describe the planning, organizing, actuating, and controlling of urban village libraries coaching by Dispusip Kota Bandung. The research method used in this study is qualitative method with a case study approach. The subjects of this study consist of three informants who act as a librarian and a key informant as a Head of Library and Archive Development by using purposive sampling technique. The research instruments used in this study are interviews, observations, and documentation studies. This study uses data analysis technique of data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing (verification). Based on the study of a model construction of urban village libraries coaching, the result is that the coaching activities of urban village libraries done by Dispusip Kota Bandung is relevant to the management functions. The functions of planning, organizing, and actuating of village libraries coaching activities in Bandung City are realized quite well. However, the function of controlling has not run optimally. This is due to the limitations of human resources owned by Dispusip Kota Bandung. This coaching program is expected to be able to realize the enforcement of urban village libraries and to give contribution to the improvement of library coaching management done by Dispusip Kota Bandung

Coriandrum sativum and Lavandula angustifolia essential oils: Chemical composition and activity on central nervous system

The aims of this study are to determine the chemical composition of Lavandula angustifolia Mill. and Coriandrum sativum L. essential oils, to evaluate their cytotoxic effects in SH-SY5Y human neuroblastoma cells, to investigate whether an alteration of adenylate cyclase 1 (ADCY1) and of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) expression can take part in the molecular mechanisms of the essential oils, and to study their possible neuronal electrophysiological effects. The essential oils were obtained by hydrodistillation, and studied by GC and GC-MS. In the oils from L. angustifolia and C. sativum, linalool was the main component (33.1% and 67.8%, respectively). SH-SY5Y cells were incubated with different concentrations of essential oils and of linalool. Cell viability and effects on ADCY1 and ERK expression were analyzed using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide MTT andWestern blotting, respectively. Variation in cellular electrophysiology was studied in primary cultures of rat cortical neurons with a multi-electrode array (MEA)-based approach. The essential oils and linalool revealed different cytotoxic activities. Linalool inhibited ADCY1 and ERK expression. Neuronal networks subjected to L. angustifolia and C. sativum essential oils showed a concentration-dependent inhibition of spontaneous electrical activity

Chemical composition and phytotoxic effects of essential oils of Salvia hierosolymitana Boiss. and Salvia multicaulis Vahl. var. simplicifolia Boiss. growing wild in Lebanon

The chemical composition of the essential oils of S. hierosolymitana Boiss. and S. multicaulis Vahl. var. simplicifolia Boiss. collected in Lebanon was studied by means of GC and GC-MS analysis. In all 115 compounds were identified: 82 for S hierosolymitana and 72 for S. multicaulis var. simplicifolia. The presence of carbonylic compounds (17%) characterizes the oil from S. hierosolymitana,while S. multicaulis var. simplicifolia oil is rich of monoterpenes (34.5%) and sesquiterpenes (46.9%). The effects of the essential oils on germination and initial radical elongation of Raphanus sativus L. (radish) and Lepidium sativum L. (garden cress) were studied, indicating in a different activity against radical elongation of the species tested

Chemical composition and phytotoxic effects of essential oils of Salvia hierosolymitana Boiss. and Salvia multicaulis Vahl. var. simplicifolia Boiss. growing wild in Lebanon

The chemical composition of the essential oils of S. hierosolymitana Boiss. and S. multicaulis Vahl. var. simplicifolia Boiss. collected in Lebanon was studied by means of GC and GC-MS analysis. In all 115 compounds were identified: 82 for S hierosolymitana and 72 for S. multicaulis var. simplicifolia. The presence of carbonylic compounds (17%) characterizes the oil from S. hierosolymitana,while S. multicaulis var. simplicifolia oil is rich of monoterpenes (34.5%) and sesquiterpenes (46.9%). The effects of the essential oils on germination and initial radical elongation of Raphanus sativus L. (radish) and Lepidium sativum L. (garden cress) were studied, indicating in a different activity against radical elongation of the species tested

Automated joint skull-stripping and segmentation with Multi-Task U-Net in large mouse brain MRI databases

Skull-stripping and region segmentation are fundamental steps in preclinical magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies, and these common procedures are usually performed manually. We present Multi-task U-Net (MU-Net), a convolutional neural network designed to accomplish both tasks simultaneously. MU-Net achieved higher segmentation accuracy than state-of-the-art multi-atlas segmentation methods with an inference time of 0.35 s and no pre-processing requirements. We trained and validated MU-Net on 128 T2-weighted mouse MRI volumes as well as on the publicly available MRM NeAT dataset of 10 MRI volumes. We tested MU-Net with an unusually large dataset combining several independent studies consisting of 1782 mouse brain MRI volumes of both healthy and Huntington animals, and measured average Dice scores of 0.906 (striati), 0.937 (cortex), and 0.978 (brain mask). Further, we explored the effectiveness of our network in the presence of different architectural features, including skip connections and recently proposed framing connections, and the effects of the age range of the training set animals. These high evaluation scores demonstrate that MU-Net is a powerful tool for segmentation and skull-stripping, decreasing inter and intra-rater variability of manual segmentation. The MU-Net code and the trained model are publicly available at https://github.com/Hierakonpolis/MU-Net

18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) functionalized gold nanoparticles (GNPs) for plasmonic photothermal ablation of cancer. A review

The meeting and merging between innovative nanotechnological systems, such as nanoparticles, and the persistent need to outperform diagnostic-therapeutic approaches to fighting cancer are revolutionizing the medical research scenario, leading us into the world of nanomedicine. Photothermal therapy (PTT) is a non-invasive thermo-ablative treatment in which cellular hyperthermia is generated through the interaction of near-infrared light with light-to-heat converter entities, such as gold nanoparticles (GNPs). GNPs have great potential to improve recovery time, cure complexity, and time spent on the treatment of specific types of cancer. The development of gold nanostructures for photothermal efficacy and target selectivity ensures effective and deep tissue-penetrating PTT with fewer worries about adverse effects from nonspecific distributions. Regardless of the thriving research recorded in the last decade regarding the multiple biomedical applications of nanoparticles and, in particular, their conjugation with drugs, few works have been completed regarding the possibility of combining GNPs with the cancer-targeted pharmaceutical fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG). This review aims to provide an actual scenario on the application of functionalized GNP-mediated PTT for cancer ablation purposes, regarding the opportunity given by the 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) functionalization