Apple polyphenol extract improves insulin sensitivity in vitro and in vivo in animal models of insulin resistance

Background: Apple polyphenols could represent a novel nutritional approach in the management and control of blood glucose, especially in type 2 diabetics. The aim of this study was to test the therapeutic potential of an apple polyphenol extract (APE) in an insulin-resistant rat model and to determine the molecular basis of insulin sensitivity action in skeletal muscle cells.Methods: Acute effect of APE on the postprandial hyperglycemic response was assayed in 15 week old obese Zucker rats (OZR), by using a meal tolerance test (MTT). The ability of APE to improve whole peripheral insulin sensitivity was also assayed in a chronic study by using the euglycemic-hyperinsulinemic clamp technique. To elucidate the molecular mechanisms, rat L6 myotubes were used. Glucose uptake was measured by using 2-[3H]-Deoxy-Glucose (2-DG) and specific inhibitors, as well as phosphorylation status of key kinases, were used to determine the implicated signaling pathway.Results: In vivo study showed that nutritional intervention with APE induced an increase of insulin sensitivity with an increase of glucose infusion rate (GIR) of 45 %. Additionally, in vitro results showed a synergistic effect between APE and insulin as well as increased glucose uptake through GLUT4 translocation in muscle cells. This translocation was mediated by phosphatydil inositol 3-kinase (PI3K) and peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-gamma (PPARγ) signaling pathways.Conclusions: As a whole, this study describes the mechanisms involved in the insulin sensitizing effect of APE, which could be considered a promising ingredient for inclusion in nutritional products focused on the management of chronic diseases such as diabetes.This research was supported by funds from Abbott Laboratories S.A

Dendrophthoe pentandra (L.) Miq extract effectively inhibits inflammation, proliferation and induces p53 expression on colitis-associated colon cancer

Background: Indonesian mistletoe grows on various trees. Mango Mistletoes (Dendrophthoe pentandra) is one type of mistletoe that grown on mango tree (.benalu mangga in bahasa Indonesia). Our study used mistletoe as a parasitic plant that has been used for traditional medicine. It has been known that Dendrophtoe pentandra extract (DPE) anti-inflammatory and anticancer. Furthermore, it is necessary to follow-up study in vivo to evaluate the response to treatment of new cancer therapeutic agents. This research aimed to determine the levels of IL-22, myeloperoxide (MPO), proliferation and wild-type p53 expression after the administration of DPE to murine models of CAC. Methods: Mouse colitis associated colon cancer (CAC) was induced firstly by azoxymethane (AOM) and followed by administration of drinking water containing 5 % dextran sodium sulfate (DSS) in a cycle protocol, each cycle consisted of seven days of 5 % DSS in the drinking water and followed by seven days of regular water. This study consists of five treatment groups: I was treated water only (control), II was administrated by (DSS only, without DPE), (III-V) were administrated by DPE (125 mg/kg BW, 250 mg/kg BW and 500 mg/kg BW) respectively. The administrated of DPE were started from the 8th weeks, were continued until 21 weeks. At the end of 21 weeks of the experiment, mice were sacrificed, colon tissue was removed, and then subjected to ELISA, flow cytometry, real-time PCR and histology examination. Results: Administration of DPE 250 mg/kgBW significantly reduce the levels of IL-22 and MPO compared with DSS only group (p < 0.001; p < 0.001). Colonic epithelial cells proliferation of group IV (DPE 250 mg/kgBW) were significantly lower than III and V groups. There was no significant change in the S phase in mice were treated DPE 125 mg/kg BW and 500 mg/kg BW, while administration of DPE 250 mg/kg BW was able to increase the percentage of cells in S phase. The expression of mRNA p53 was up regulated in mice received DPE 125 mg/kg BW. Conclusion: These findings indicate that the DPE could inhibit colonic epithelial cells proliferation through p53 pathway independently. This study also showed that DPE could be potential sources of new therapy

Root-hair endophyte stacking in finger millet creates a physicochemical barrier to trap the fungal pathogen Fusarium graminearum

The ancient African crop, finger millet, has broad resistance to pathogens including the toxigenic fungus Fusarium graminearum. Here, we report the discovery of a novel plant defence mechanism resulting from an unusual symbiosis between finger millet and a root-inhabiting bacterial endophyte, M6 (Enterobacter sp.). Seed-coated M6 swarms towards root-invading Fusarium and is associated with the growth of root hairs, which then bend parallel to the root axis, subsequently forming biofilm-mediated microcolonies, resulting in a remarkable, multilayer root-hair endophyte stack (RHESt). The RHESt results in a physical barrier that prevents entry and/or traps F. graminearum, which is then killed. M6 thus creates its own specialized killing microhabitat. Tn5-mutagenesis shows that M6 killing requires c-di-GMP-dependent signalling, diverse fungicides and resistance to a Fusarium-derived antibiotic. Further molecular evidence suggests long-term host-endophyte-pathogen co-evolution. The end result of this remarkable symbiosis is reduced deoxynivalenol mycotoxin, potentially benefiting millions of subsistence farmers and livestock. Further results suggest that the anti-Fusarium activity of M6 may be transferable to maize and wheat. RHESt demonstrates the value of exploring ancient, orphan crop microbiomes

2016 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communication Workshops (PerCom Workshops)

Content sharing and online collaboration have become extremely popular in recent years, in particular with the pervasiveness of cloud storage services such as Dropbox. However, these popular cloud services are not accessible when users are offline and do not take the geographical location of the users into account when distributing content. Despite years of research in opportunistic content dissemination, real users are yet to fully experience the advantages of content sharing in proximity. To this end, we propose uDrop which literally pushes the cloud storage services to the edge of the network whenever interested users are in proximity of each other. uDrop enables content sharing among users in the vicinity without relying on networking infrastructure while improving the user quality of experience and reducing the cost of bandwidth. In this demonstration, we show the practical feasibility of uDrop service on Android smartphones

Maintenance intervention optimisation for existing railway bridges

Maintenance of aging infrastructure is a burden on many organisational budgets, and Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) is accepted as an effective method to reduce these costs. However, LCCA becomes extremely complex when applied at the individual bridge component level within a large bridge population while considering multiple maintenance strategies, varying deterioration rates and intervention intervals. To address this concern, a decision support model is presented that proposes maintenance actions for future interventions based on a selection of maintenance strategies and given organisational budget constraints. The remaining service life of surrounding components is considered when assessing the most appropriate maintenance actions. Three popular bridge management strategies are considered in this model, comprising refurbishment, upgrade and renewal strategies. The infrastructure manager may apply one of these three strategies at the bridge level to estimate future network budgets or align with existing budgets. The developed decision support application allows “what-if” scenarios to be generated to determine life cycle costs by changing life gained from maintenance actions, maintenance costs, maintenance strategy, discount rate, intervention trigger time and minimum intervention intervals

Crowd-Cache: Leveraging on spatio-temporal correlation in content popularity for mobile networking in proximity

Mobile capped plans are being increasingly adopted by mobile operators due to an exponential data traffic growth. Users then often suffer high data consumption costs as well as poor quality of experience. In this paper, we introduce a novel content access scheme, Crowd-Cache, which enables mobile networking in proximity by exploiting the transient co-location of devices, the epidemic nature of content popularity, and the capabilities of smart mobile devices. Crowd-Cache provides mobile users access to popular content cheaply with low latency while improving the overall quality of experience. We model the Crowd-Cache system in a probabilistic framework using a real-life dataset of video content access. The simulation results show that, in a public transportation scenario, more than 80% of the passengers can save at least 40% on their cellular data usage during a typical average city bus commute of 10 minutes. Finally, we show the practical viability of the system by implementing and evaluating the system on Android devices

A Survey of Wearable Devices and Challenges

© 1998-2012 IEEE. As smartphone penetration saturates, we are witnessing a new trend in personal mobile devices-wearable mobile devices or simply wearables as it is often called. Wearables come in many different forms and flavors targeting different accessories and clothing that people wear. Although small in size, they are often expected to continuously sense, collect, and upload various physiological data to improve quality of life. These requirements put significant demand on improving communication security and reducing power consumption of the system, fueling new research in these areas. In this paper, we first provide a comprehensive survey and classification of commercially available wearables and research prototypes. We then examine the communication security issues facing the popular wearables followed by a survey of solutions studied in the literature. We also categorize and explain the techniques for improving the power efficiency of wearables. Next, we survey the research literature in wearable computing. We conclude with future directions in wearable market and research

19th IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks, WoWMoM 2018

Cash-less payment via a variety of credit, debit or prepaid cards is pervasive in our interconnected society, but not so ubiquitous in remote rural regions where network connectivity is intermittent. We proposed a cash-less payment scheme for remote villages based on blockchains that allow maintaining a record of verifiable transactions in a distributed manner. We overcome the limitations of intermittent network connectivity by solely relying on blockchain mining nodes in the village for transaction processing and verification. The bank joins as a peer and monitors node behaviors, rewards miners and processes currency exchanges whenever the connectivity is available. We take advantage of the Ethereum network to develop our solution and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system on off-the-shelf computing devices. We emulate a remote village scenario with intermittent network connectivity and show the robustness and reliability of the proposed system

Demo:a delay-tolerant payment scheme on the Ethereum blockchain

Abstract Cash-less payment via a variety of credit, debit or prepaid cards is pervasive in our interconnected society, but not so ubiquitous in remote rural regions where network connectivity is intermittent. We proposed a cash-less payment scheme for remote villages based on blockchains that allow maintaining a record of verifiable transactions in a distributed manner. We overcome the limitations of intermittent network connectivity by solely relying on blockchain mining nodes in the village for transaction processing and verification. The bank joins as a peer and monitors node behaviors, rewards miners and processes currency exchanges whenever the connectivity is available. We take advantage of the Ethereum network to develop our solution and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed system on off-the-shelf computing devices. We emulate a remote village scenario with intermittent network connectivity and show the robustness and reliability of the proposed system

Variance of Arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea) Starch Granule Morphology among Five Different Provinces in Sri Lanka

Arrowroot (Maranta arundinacea) is an underutilized tuber crop in Sri Lanka that produces a gluten-free, easily digestible starch. This research aimed to determine the variance of arrowroot starch granular morphology among the plants grown in five different provinces (Western, North-Western, Southern, Sabaragamuwa, Uva). Arrowroot starch granules were observed using the light microscope and scanning electron microscope. Oval, irregular globular and spherical shapes were the predominant granule shapes for arrowroot. The mean percentage of oval shaped granules ranged between 48.46 % - 59.34 %.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The length and width of the granules were not significantly different among the five provinces. The length of the starch granules ranged between 42.91 - 45.86 µm while the width ranged between 30.81 – 32.32 µm. Arrowroot flour samples from five different provinces in Sri Lanka were not significantly different with regard to the starch granular morphology and therefore, arrowroot flour can be utilized in the local food industry without concerning their geographical locations