Chemical constituents, radical scavenging activity and enzyme inhibitory capacity of fruits from Cotoneaster pannosus Franch

Cotoneaster pannosus (Rosaceae) is a semievergreen shrub, producing globose dark red pomes, native to China and widely used as an ornamental plant all over the world. Despite its extensive cultivation, little information is available on the chemical composition and biological activities of its fruits. In this work, the analysis of the chemical composition of C. pannosus fruits, in terms of phenolic components, carotenoids and ascorbic acid by HPLC/DAD, HPLC/ESI-MS and MS/MS as well as in terms of macro- and micronutrients was performed. The fruits proved to be a good source of shikimic acid and caffeoylquinic acids, whereas β-carotene, pelargonidin-3-O glucoside and cyanidin-3,5-rutinoside gave an important contribution to the color of the fruit. Both the polar and apolar fruit extracts showed noteworthy radical scavenger activity and inhibitory effects against monoamine oxidase A (MAO-A), tyrosinase (TYR) and α-glucosidase, making C. pannosus red pomes a promising candidate ingredient in functional foods and dietary supplements

Optimization of Solvent-Free Microwave-Assisted Hydrodiffusion and Gravity Extraction of Morus nigra L. Fruits Maximizing Polyphenols, Sugar Content, and Biological Activities Using Central Composite Design

Black mulberry, Morus nigra L. (family: Moraceae), is a healthy food and medicinal plant. Microwave hydrodiffusion and gravity (MHG) is one of the most innovative applications of solvent-free microwave extraction. The aim of this study was to optimize for the first time the MHG solvent-free extraction of polyphenols and sugars from M. nigra fruits. Optimization was carried out using a central composite design (CCD) with selected responses such as extraction yield, total polyphenol (TPC), flavonoid (TFC), anthocyanin (TAC), and sugar (TSC) contents, in addition to DPPH radical scavenging, and a-glucosidase (AGHi), lipase (Li), and xanthine oxidase (XOi) inhibition as tools to evaluate the best parameters for efficient and rapid extraction of black mulberry. The optimized extract was characterized in terms of the aforementioned parameters to validate the models, and was further analyzed for 36 individual polyphenols using HPLC-MS/MS. The optimized MHG extract was finally compared with traditional extracts, and demonstrated much better performance in terms of TPC, TAC, and Li, while the traditional extracts showed better XOi and AGHi. In conclusion, MHG is a valuable green technique for the production of non-degraded black mulberry polyphenol-rich extract and we suggest its larger use in the pharmaceutical and food industries

TOpic: rare and special cases, the real "Strange cases"

Introduction: The bladder hernia represents approximately 1-3% of all inguinal hernias, where patients aged more than 50 years have a higher incidence (10%). Many factors contribute to the development of a bladder hernia, including the presence of a urinary outlet obstruction causing chronic bladder distention, the loss of bladder tone, pericystitis, the perivesical bladder fat protrusion and the obesity

Desarrollo, implementación y utilización de modelos para el procesamiento automático de textos

El libro recoge ponencias y talleres seleccionados de JALIMI 2005 (Jornadas Argentinas de Lingüística Informática: Modelización e Ingeniería), y está organizado en nueve capítulos y un apéndice. Si bien hay sustantivas diferencias en los enfoques, las metodologías, las propiedades específicas estudiadas y las aplicaciones propuestas o proyectadas, todos los capítulos comunican resultados de investigaciones que pretenden contribuir a alcanzar el objetivo a largo plazo de la Lingüística Informática, a saber: emular en términos cibernéticos la extraordinaria capacidad humana de producir y comprender textos en lengua natural

Energy product enhancement in imperfectly exchange-coupled nanocomposite magnets

[EN] Interfacial exchange coupling is known to improve the permanent magnetic performance (i.e., maximal energy product) in composites of magnetically hard and soft particles. The prevailing strategy, employed in a plethora of compositions, consists in maximizing the coupling between the hard and soft phases and optimizing material parameters such as particle size or phase composition. In CoFeO–FeCo nanocomposites, it is experimentally shown that interparticle uncoupling in combination with the sizes of the soft phase grains below the single-domain threshold leads to enhanced magnetic properties at room temperature, while maximizing exchange coupling implies a collapse in coercivity and hence in the maximal energy product. The results are corroborated by micromagnetic calculations and the origin of the exchange-induced softening is discussed. It is emphasized that engineering interfaces in order to optimize, rather than maximize, the degree of exchange coupling are a necessary requirement to improve the energy product in nanocomposite magnets and to successfully develop advanced rare-earth-free permanent magnets.Financial support from the European Commission through the project NANOPYME FP7-NMP-2012-SMALL-6 NANOPYME (n° 310516), and from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad through Project MAT2013-48009-C4-1-P. F.R.M. is also indebted to MINECO for a ‘‘Juan de la Cierva’’ contract (ref: JCI-2012-14521), which is co-financed with European Social Found

Nature’s contribution to people provided by pastoral systems across European, African, and Middle East Mediterranean countries: trends, approaches and gaps

Mediterranean pastoral systems are providers of a wide array of Nature’s Contribution to People (NCP). They are ‘complex systems’ characterized by limited resources and socio-economic dynamics currently threatened by climate and social changes. Despite a growing number of scientifc articles dealing with NCP, there is a high risk that the existing literature has left out the complexity of such systems. In the light of ongoing social, economic, and climatic changes in the Mediterranean basin, neglecting the complexity of pastoral systems can lead to signifcant research biases, missing the priorities afecting the stability and continuity of such systems. A combination of frameworks of analysis provided by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment and by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services was applied to understand if and to what extent the complexity of Mediterranean pastoral systems has been considered in the available literature. Most of the 126 papers report studies conducted in the European Union zone (102 papers), with the majority in Spain (50). Fewer studies have been conducted in the Middle East (15 papers) and Africa zones (9 papers). Despite results confrming the importance of pastoral systems as providers of NCP, most of the eligible papers focused on regulating NCP. A lack of a multisectoral approach and integration of knowledge suggests that the complexity of Mediterranean pastoral systems has been overlooked by researchers. The creation of ‘hybrid knowledge’ bridging the expertise of diferent stakeholders could be the key ingredient to properly address the complexity of Mediterranean pastoral systems.This study was carried out with the support of project PACTORES (PAstoral ACTORs, ES, and Society as key elements of agro-pastoral systems in the Mediterranean), ERANETMED ‘EURO-MEDITERRANEAN Cooperation through ERANET joint activities and beyond’- Joint Transnational Call 2016 - Environmental challenges and solutions for vulnerable communities (ERANETMED2-72-303). We would like to thank the late Marco Toderi for his considerable help and inspiration and without whom this research would never have been possible. Open access funding provided by Università Politecnica delle Marche within the CRUI-CARE Agreement.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The HST PanCET Program:Hints of Na I and Evidence of a Cloudy Atmosphere for the Inflated Hot Jupiter WASP-52b

We present an optical to near-infrared transmission spectrum of the inflated hot Jupiter WASP-52b using three transit observations from the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) mounted on the Hubble Space Telescope, combined with Spitzer/Infrared Array Camera (IRAC) photometry at 3.6 microns and 4.5 microns. Since WASP-52 is a moderately active (log(Lx/Lbol) = -4.7) star, we correct the transit light curves for the effect of stellar activity using ground-based photometric monitoring data from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae (ASAS-SN) and Tennessee State University's Automatic Imaging Telescope (AIT). We bin the data in 38 spectrophotometric light curves from 0.29 to 4.5 microns and measure the transit depths to a median precision of 90 ppm. We compare the transmission spectrum to a grid of forward atmospheric models and find that our results are consistent with a cloudy spectrum and evidence of sodium at 2.3-sigma confidence, but no observable evidence of potassium absorption even in the narrowest spectroscopic channel. We find that the optical transmission spectrum of WASP-52b is similar to that of the well-studied inflated hot Jupiter HAT-P-1b, which has comparable surface gravity, equilibrium temperature, mass, radius, and stellar irradiation levels. At longer wavelengths, however, the best fitting models for WASP-52b and HAT-P-1b predict quite dissimilar properties, which could be confirmed with observations at wavelengths longer than ~1 micron. The identification of planets with common atmospheric properties and similar system parameters will be insightful for comparative atmospheric studies with the James Webb Space Telescope.Comment: 35 pages, 16 figures, accepted for publication in A