Tackling the challenges of the oral administration of a fermented flour extract with liposomes: Effect on intestinal HT-29 cells

LisosanG is a fermented flour that contains polyphenols, polyunsaturated fatty acids, vitamins, and alpha-lipoic acid with antioxidant/anti-inflammatory properties. These compounds are often characterized by instability, low solubility/bioavailability, and poor absorption that restrict their application in therapy. These problems can be solved by using delivery systems among which liposomes have emerged as prominent candidates. Liposomes can load compounds with varied physico-chemical properties, providing protection from degradation, increased solubility, modulation of release, and facilitated diffusion across biomembranes. Lisosan G liposomes tailored for oral administration were prepared. Eudragit® enteric polymer was added to protect the liposomes from acidic pH. The Eudragit-liposomes were around 100 nm and unilamellar. They were resistant to acidic conditions and did not alter cell viability, nor intracellular ROS levels. These findings confirm that liposomes are an efficient system for the loading of multicomponent-based extracts and that, when properly formulated, can offer protection from physiological degradation, and be safely applied to cells

Sorafenib as a feasible therapeutic option in haemophiliacs with hepatocellular carcinoma

hepatocellular carcinoma, haemophilia, treatmen

Hard Thermal Loops, Static Response and the Composite Effective Action

First, we investigate the static non-Abelian Kubo equation. We prove that it does not possess finite energy solutions; thereby we establish that gauge theories do not support hard thermal solitons. A similar argument shows that "static" instantons are absent. In addition, we note that the static equations reproduce the expected screening of the non-Abelian electric field by a gauge invariant Debye mass m=gT sqrt((N+N_F/2)/3). Second, we derive the non-Abelian Kubo equation from the composite effective action. This is achieved by showing that the requirement of stationarity of the composite effective action is equivalent, within a kinematical approximation scheme, to the condition of gauge invariance for the generating functional of hard thermal loops.Comment: 17 pages, MIT preprint CTP#2261. An Appendix [including one (appended) PS figure] presenting a numerical analysis of the static solutions has been included. A note relating our approach to alternative ones has been added. We have also added references and comments in Section II

An Algebraic Criterion for the Ultraviolet Finiteness of Quantum Field Theories

An algebraic criterion for the vanishing of the beta function for renormalizable quantum field theories is presented. Use is made of the descent equations following from the Wess-Zumino consistency condition. In some cases, these equations relate the fully quantized action to a local gauge invariant polynomial. The vanishing of the anomalous dimension of this polynomial enables us to establish a nonrenormalization theorem for the beta function $\beta_g$, stating that if the one-loop order contribution vanishes, then $\beta_g$ will vanish to all orders of perturbation theory. As a by-product, the special case in which $\beta_g$ is only of one-loop order, without further corrections, is also covered. The examples of the N=2,4 supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories are worked out in detail.Comment: 1+32 pages, LaTeX2e, typos correcte

Monitoring Anti-PEG Antibodies Level upon Repeated Lipid Nanoparticle-Based COVID-19 Vaccine Administration

PEGylated lipids are one of the four constituents of lipid nanoparticle mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. Therefore, various concerns have been raised on the generation of anti-PEG antibodies and their potential role in inducing hypersensitivity reactions following vaccination or in reducing vaccine efficacy due to anti-carrier immunity. Here, we assess the prevalence of anti-PEG antibodies, in a cohort of vaccinated individuals, and give an overview of their time evolution after repeated vaccine administrations. Results indicate that, in our cohort, the presence of PEG in the formulation did not influence the level of anti-Spike antibodies generated upon vaccination and was not related to any reported, serious adverse effects. The time-course analysis of anti-PEG IgG showed no significant booster effect after each dose, whereas for IgM a significant increase in antibody levels was detected after the first and third dose. Data suggest that the presence of PEG in the formulation does not affect safety or efficacy of lipid-nanoparticle-based COVID-19 vaccines

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Mission Level 4 Surface and Root Zone Soil Moisture (L4_SM) Product Specification Document

This is the Product Specification Document (PSD) for Level 4 Surface and Root Zone Soil Moisture (L4_SM) data for the Science Data System (SDS) of the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) project. The L4_SM data product provides estimates of land surface conditions based on the assimilation of SMAP observations into a customized version of the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System, Version 5 (GEOS-5) land data assimilation system (LDAS). This document applies to any standard L4_SM data product generated by the SMAP Project

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Mission Level 4 Surface and Root Zone Soil Moisture (L4_SM) Product Specification Document

This is the Product Specification Document (PSD) for Level 4 Surface and Root Zone Soil Moisture (L4_SM) data for the Science Data System (SDS) of the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) project. The L4_SM data product provides estimates of land surface conditions based on the assimilation of SMAP observations into a customized version of the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System, Version 5 (GEOS-5) land data assimilation system (LDAS). This document applies to any standard L4_SM data product generated by the SMAP Project. The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission will enhance the accuracy and the resolution of space-based measurements of terrestrial soil moisture and freeze-thaw state. SMAP data products will have a noteworthy impact on multiple relevant and current Earth Science endeavors. These include: Understanding of the processes that link the terrestrial water, the energy and the carbon cycles, Estimations of global water and energy fluxes over the land surfaces, Quantification of the net carbon flux in boreal landscapes Forecast skill of both weather and climate, Predictions and monitoring of natural disasters including floods, landslides and droughts, and Predictions of agricultural productivity. To provide these data, the SMAP mission will deploy a satellite observatory in a near polar, sun synchronous orbit. The observatory will house an L-band radiometer that operates at 1.40 GHz and an L-band radar that operates at 1.26 GHz. The instruments will share a rotating reflector antenna with a 6 meter aperture that scans over a 1000 km swath

Constraints from orbital motions around the Earth of the environmental fifth-force hypothesis for the OPERA superluminal neutrino phenomenology

It has been recently suggested by Dvali and Vikman that the superluminal neutrino phenomenology of the OPERA experiment may be due to an environmental feature of the Earth, naturally yielding a long-range fifth force of gravitational origin whose coupling with the neutrino is set by the scale M_*, in units of reduced Planck mass. Its characteristic length lambda should not be smaller than one Earth's radius R_e, while its upper bound is expected to be slightly smaller than the Earth-Moon distance (60 R_e). We analytically work out some orbital effects of a Yukawa-type fifth force for a test particle moving in the modified field of a central body. Our results are quite general since they are not restricted to any particular size of lambda; moreover, they are valid for an arbitrary orbital configuration of the particle, i.e. for any value of its eccentricity $e$. We find that the dimensionless strength coupling parameter alpha is constrained to |alpha| <= 1 10^-10-4 10^-9 for 1 R_e <= lambda <= 10 R_e by the laser data of the Earth's artificial satellite LAGEOS II, corresponding to M_* >= 4 10^9 -1.6 10^10. The Moon perigee allows to obtain |alpha| <= 3 10^-11 for the Earth-Moon pair in the range 15 R_e <= lambda = 3 10^10 - 4.5 10^10. Our results are neither necessarily limited to the superluminal OPERA scenario nor to the Dvali-Vikman model, in which it is M_* = 10^-6 at lambda = 1 R_e, in contrast with our bounds: they generally extend to any theoretical scenario implying a fifth-force of Yukawa-type.Comment: LaTex2e, 18 pages, 4 figures, 1 table, 81 reference

Suitability of nanoparticles to face benzo(A)pyrene-induced genetic and chromosomal damage in m. galloprovincialis. an in vitro approach

Benzo(a)pyrene (B(a)P) is a well-known genotoxic agent, the removal of which from environmental matrices is mandatory, necessitating the application of cleaning strategies that are harmless to human and environmental health. The potential application of nanoparticles (NPs) in the remediation of polluted environments is of increasing interest. Here, specifically designed NPs were selected as being non-genotoxic and able to interact with B(a)P, in order to address the genetic and chromosomal damage it produces. A newly formulated pure anatase nano-titanium (nano-TiO2), a commercial mixture of rutile and anatase, and carbon black-derived hydrophilic NPs (HNP) were applied. Once it had been ascertained that the NPs selected for the work did not induce genotoxicity, marine mussel gill biopsies were exposed in vitro to B(a)P (2 µg/mL), alone and in combination with the selected NPs (50 µg/mL nano-TiO2, 10 µg/mL HNP). DNA primary reversible damage was evaluated by means of the Comet assay. Chromosomal persistent damage was assessed on the basis of micronuclei frequency and nuclear abnormalities by means of the Micronucleus-Cytome assay. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) was performed to investigate the mechanism of action exerted by NPs. Pure Anatase n-TiO2 was found to be the most suitable for our purpose, as it is cyto-and genotoxicity free and able to reduce the genetic and chromosomal damage associated with exposure to B(a)P