Safety evaluation of polyphenol-rich extract from bamboo shavings

In this paper, a number of acute and subchronic toxicological tests were documented to evaluate the safety of a polyphenol-rich ethanol extract of bamboo shavings (EEBS). (i) Acute toxicity test: The oral maximum tolerated dose (MTD) of EEBS was above 20 g/kg body weight for mice, thus the amount can be seen as practically non-toxic. (ii) Mutagenicity test: No mutagenicity was detected according to the negative experimental results of Ames test, micronucleus test on bone marrow cell in mice andabnormality test on mice sperms. (iii) 30 days feeding study: There were no treatment-related toxic effects when EEBS were at levels of 2.50, 5.00, or 10.00 g/kg/day and no adverse effects of EEBS had been observed in these studies. The no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) of the extract was 10.00 g/kg/day during the 30 days. In addition, no significant distinctions were observed in hematology values, clinical chemistry values and organ/body weight ratio (P > 0.05). In conclusion, EEBS is safe and the results support the use of EEBS for various foods

eta_c production at the Large Hadron Collider

We have studied the production of the 1S_0 charmonium state, eta_c, at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the framework of Non-Relativistic Quantum Chromodynamics (NRQCD) using heavy-quark symmetry. We find that NRQCD predicts a large production cross-section for this resonance at the LHC even after taking account the small branching ratio of eta_c into two photons. We show that it will be possible to test NRQCD through its predictions for eta_c, with the statistics that will be achieved at the early stage of the LHC, running at a center of mass energy of 7 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 100 pb^{-1}Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Non-Gaussianity from false vacuum inflation: Old curvaton scenario

We calculate the three-point correlation function of the comoving curvature perturbation generated during an inflationary epoch driven by false vacuum energy. We get a novel false vacuum shape bispectrum, which peaks in the equilateral limit. Using this result, we propose a scenario which we call "old curvaton". The shape of the resulting bispectrum lies between the local and the false vacuum shapes. In addition we have a large running of the spectral index.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures; v2 with minor revison; v3 final version to appear on JCA

Studies on bioactive peptide from Chinese soft-shelled turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis) with functionalities of ACE inhibition and antioxidation

This paper dealt with a novel anti-hypertensive collagen peptide from Chinese soft-shelled turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis), which was an efficient inhibitor of angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE, EC 3.4.15.1). ACE plays an important physiological role in the regulation of blood pressure by virtue of the rennin angiotensin system. In traditional Chinese medicine, Chinese soft-shelled turtle possesses many health-function properties. This study investigated the effects of Chinese soft-shelled turtle hydrolysate (CTH) on ACE inhibition. The CTH showed limited inhibition effect on ACE with an IC50 value at 280 ± 8 μg/ml, while its graded fraction of molecular weight less than 5000 Da (CTH5K) obtained through membrane ultra filtration exhibited better inhibitory activity (IC50 = 190 ± 5 μg/ml). The antioxidant activity of CTH was also determined by radical scavenging ability. The CTH5K showed higher antioxidant activity. These results indicate that CTH5K possesses potent antihypertensive and antioxidant activity, and provides a bioactive peptide material with potential applications as ingredients in functional foods.Key words: Chinese soft-shelled turtle, collagen peptide, angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor, antihypertensive, antioxidant