Chemical composition and antifungal effects of three species of Satureja (S. hortensis, S. spicigera, and S. khuzistanica) essential oils on the main pathogens of strawberry fruit

Due to an increasing risk of chemical contamination upon the application of synthetic fungicides to preserve fresh fruits and vegetables, essential oils are gaining increasing attentions. In this research, besides chemical analysis of the essential oils of three Satureja species (S. hortensis, S. spicigera, and S. khuzistanica) by GC-MS, their fungicidal and/or fungistatic effects on postharvest pathogens of strawberry were investigated. Essential oils were extracted by means of hydro-distillation and afterwards GC/MS analysis was performed to identify their components. Carvacrol, γ-terpinene and p-cymene were detected as the repeating main constituents of the spices, while thymol and carvacrol methyl ether were found as major components only in S. spicigera oil. In vitro results showed that at the maximum concentration, the essential oils did not possess fungicidal effects on Aspergillus niger but they exhibited fungicidal activities against Penicillium digitatum, Botrytis cinerea and Rhizopus stolonifer. However, S. khuzistanica was the strongest oil in fungicidal activity. S. hortensis oil was more effective than S. spicigera against B. cinerea whereas S. spicigera oil showed stronger fungicidal activity against R. stolonifer. In conclusion, essential oils isolated from three savory species could be suitable for applications in the food industry to control molds and improve the safety of fruits and vegetables. © 2015 Elsevier B.V

Salicylic acid and methyl jasmonate enhance drought tolerance in chamomile plants

Introduction: The dried flowers of chamomile contain many terpenoids and flavonoids contributing to its medicinal properties. Salicylic acid (SA) and methyl jasmonate (MeJA) have antioxidant properties and function as direct radical scavengers. Two Matricaria chamomilla cultivars (Bodgold and Hungary breed seeds) were used in this study to investigate the effects of exogenous application of SA and MeJA on protection against drought stress as well as on changes of malone dialdehyde (MDA) and electrolyte leakage index (ELI), and the fluctuation of proline and soluble sugars content in the leaves under drought stress. Methods: The experiment was conducted in a factorial design based on randomized complete blocks with three replicates. Chamomile plants were treated by two levels of drought stress as well as two different levels of MeJA (i.e., 0.0 and 100 &mu;M) and SA (i.e., 0.0 and 0.5 mM) solutions. Results: There was a dramatic drought induced increase in the MDA content (128) and ELI (49) in the leaves. Deleterious effect of drought stress was more severe in untreated plants than in treated ones. Treatments with SA and MeJA significantly improved drought tolerance in chamomile plants. These treatments effectively maintained membrane integrity, thereby retarding electrolyte leakage and membrane lipid peroxidation (MDA). Treatments with SA and MeJA were also effective in enhancing the antioxidant concentrations of proline and soluble sugars. Conclusion: The production of these antioxidants could have been part of a defence system against drought damage, reducing MDA and ELI and maintaining membrane stability.</p

Sistem Kontrol Pintu Pagar Rumah Berbasis Arduino dengan Koneksi Nirkabel Bluetooth pada Smartphone Android

Pintu pagar rumah memiliki peran yang sangat penting dalam kehidupan sehari-hari terutama sebagai pembatas rumah dengan jalan. Pintu pagar yang digunakan di Indonesia rata-rata memiliki cara kerja didorong atau ditarik untuk menutup atau membuka. Untuk meringankan beban pengguna, maka dibangun sebuah sistem pengontrolan pintu pagar jarak jauh. Pengontrolan pintu pagar dapat dilakukan dengan menggunakan sebuah smartphone Android sebagai antar muka. Dengan menggunakan koneksi Bluetooth dan program pada smartphone Android maka pengguna dengan mudahnya melakukan kontrol buka atau tutup pintu pagar dengan hanya sentuhan. Pintu pagar yang dirancang juga dapat dikunci dengan menggunakan sebuah kunci elektrik, sehingga pengguna smartphone Android dapat mengunci dan membuka kunci pagar. Sistem ini juga dilengkapi dengan sebuah sensor obyek yang dapat menahan gerakan pintu pagar agar tidak menutup ketika obyek dari arah dalam rumah ingin keluar rumah. Tiap fungsi kunci dan gerak pagar juga dapat dilakukan tanpa koneksi Bluetooth yaitu dengan menggunakan modul tombol manual yang telah dirancang menggunakan mikrokontroler. Setiap fungsi yang dapat dilakukan oleh pintu pagar diprogram menggunakan sebuah mikrokontroler yaitu Arduino Mega. Hasil yang dicapai pada pengujian sistem ini adalah pintu pagar dapat dikontrol dari jarak jauh menggunakan koneksi Bluetooth untuk melakukan buka/tutup pintu pagar, serta kunci/buka kunci pintu pagar. Selain itu pintu pagar dapat dikunci dan buka kunci dari jarak jauh menggunakan program pada smartphone Android, selain itu tiap fungsi tersebut dapat dilakukan tanpa koneksi Bluetooth dengan menggunakan tombol manual

Augmenting Ontology Alignment by Semantic Embedding and Distant Supervision

Ontology alignment plays a critical role in knowledge integration and has been widely investigated in the past decades. State of the art systems, however, still have considerable room for performance improvement especially in dealing with new (industrial) alignment tasks. In this paper we present a machine learning based extension to traditional ontology alignment systems, using distant supervision for training, ontology embedding and Siamese Neural Networks for incorporating richer semantics. We have used the extension together with traditional systems such as LogMap and AML to align two food ontologies, HeLiS and FoodOn, and we found that the extension recalls many additional valid mappings and also avoids some false positive mappings. This is also verified by an evaluation on alignment tasks from the OAEI conference track

Dynamic and volumetric variables reliably predict fluid responsiveness in a porcine model with pleural effusion

Background: The ability of stroke volume variation (SVV), pulse pressure variation (PPV) and global end-diastolic volume (GEDV) for prediction of fluid responsiveness in presence of pleural effusion is unknown. The aim of the present study was to challenge the ability of SVV, PPV and GEDV to predict fluid responsiveness in a porcine model with pleural effusions. Methods: Pigs were studied at baseline and after fluid loading with 8 ml kg−1 6% hydroxyethyl starch. After withdrawal of 8 ml kg−1 blood and induction of pleural effusion up to 50 ml kg−1 on either side, measurements at baseline and after fluid loading were repeated. Cardiac output, stroke volume, central venous pressure (CVP) and pulmonary occlusion pressure (PAOP) were obtained by pulmonary thermodilution, whereas GEDV was determined by transpulmonary thermodilution. SVV and PPV were monitored continuously by pulse contour analysis. Results: Pleural effusion was associated with significant changes in lung compliance, peak airway pressure and stroke volume in both responders and non-responders. At baseline, SVV, PPV and GEDV reliably predicted fluid responsiveness (area under the curve 0.85 (p<0.001), 0.88 (p<0.001), 0.77 (p = 0.007). After induction of pleural effusion the ability of SVV, PPV and GEDV to predict fluid responsiveness was well preserved and also PAOP was predictive. Threshold values for SVV and PPV increased in presence of pleural effusion. Conclusions: In this porcine model, bilateral pleural effusion did not affect the ability of SVV, PPV and GEDV to predict fluid responsiveness

Coupled Fixed-Point Theorems for Contractions in Partially Ordered Metric Spaces and Applications

Bhaskar and Lakshmikantham (2006) showed the existence of coupled coincidence points of a mapping F from X×X into X and a mapping g from X into X with some applications. The aim of this paper is to extend the results of Bhaskar and Lakshmikantham and improve the recent fixed-point theorems due to Bessem Samet (2010). Indeed, we introduce the definition of generalized g-Meir-Keeler type contractions and prove some coupled fixed point theorems under a generalized g-Meir-Keeler-contractive condition. Also, some applications of the main results in this paper are given

Machine Learning-Friendly Biomedical Datasets for Equivalence and Subsumption Ontology Matching

Ontology Matching (OM) plays an important role in many domains such as bioinformatics and the Semantic Web, and its research is becoming increasingly popular, especially with the application of machine learning (ML) techniques. Although the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI) represents an impressive effort for the systematic evaluation of OM systems, it still suffers from several limitations including limited evaluation of subsumption mappings, suboptimal reference mappings, and limited support for the evaluation of ML-based systems. To tackle these limitations, we introduce five new biomedical OM tasks involving ontologies extracted from Mondo and UMLS. Each task includes both equivalence and subsumption matching; the quality of reference mappings is ensured by human curation, ontology pruning, etc.; and a comprehensive evaluation framework is proposed to measure OM performance from various perspectives for both ML-based and non-ML-based OM systems. We report evaluation results for OM systems of different types to demonstrate the usage of these resources, all of which are publicly available as part of the new Bio-ML track at OAEI 2022

Identification and Characterization of a Small Molecule that Activates Thiosulfate Sulfurtransferase and Stimulates Mitochondrial Respiration

The enzyme Thiosulfate sulfurtransferase (TST, EC 2.8.1.1), is a positive genetic predictor of diabetes type 2 and obesity. As increased TST activity protects against the development of diabetic symptoms in mice, an activating compound for TST may provide therapeutic benefits in diabetes and obesity. We identified a small molecule activator of human TST through screening of an inhouse small molecule library. Kinetic studies in vitro suggest that two distinct isomers of the compound are required for full activation as well as an allosteric mode of activation. Additionally, we studied the effect of TST protein and the activator on TST activity through mitochondrial respiration. Molecular docking and molecular dynamics (MD) approaches supports an allosteric site for the binding of the activator, which is supported by the lack of activation in the E. coli. mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase. Finally, we show that increasing TST activity in isolated mitochondria increases mitochondrial oxygen consumption. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.</p

Quantitative assessment of cardiac load-responsiveness during extracorporeal life support: case and rationale

We describe a case of a patient assisted by extracorporeal life support, in which we obtained the dynamic filling index, a measure for venous volume during extracorporeal life support, and used this index to assess cardiac load-responsiveness during acute reloading. While reloading, the obtained findings on cardiac pump function by the dynamic filling index were supported by trans-esophageal echocardiography and standard pressure measurement. This suggests that the dynamic filling index can be used to assess cardiac load-responsiveness during extracorporeal life support