Chemotype of damask rose with oleic acid (9 octadecenoic acid) and its antimicrobial effectiveness

Essential oils are natural products that have great antimicrobial potential value against many fungi and bacteria. Rosa damascena Mill. is one of the most important aromatic species of the Rosaceae family from which essential oil and economically valuable products can be obtained. The present study was designed to investigate the major compositions of the essential oil of this plant in Isfahan region of Iran and to identify its antibacterial and antifungal effects against 11 microorganisms causing human diseases and food spoilage. The essential oil was extracted by using the Clevenger apparatus and was analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS) technique. Its antimicrobial activity was evaluated by well diffusion, minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimum bactericide concentration (MBC). The results showed that the most important compounds of the essential oil were nonadecane (24.72%), heneicosane (19.325%), oleic acid (17.63%), and citronellol (12.61%). The results also showed that the highest inhibition zone of rose essential oil was against Aspergillus brasiliensis (15.00 ± 0.00 mm) and had a significant effect on Klebsiella pneumoniae (~ 8.00 mm). Also the rose oil had a significant inhibition and lethal effect against Candida albicans (MIC and MBC ~ 125 μg/mL), which is equivalent to the nystatin antibiotic (~ 125 μg/mL). Therefore, the essential oil of Damask rose can be considered as an alternative natural product for the prevention and treatment of fungal diseases in humans and against food spoilage as well

Evaluation of the composition and antimicrobial activities of essential oils from four species of Lamiaceae Martinov native to Iran

In this study the essential oils obtained from four different plant species belonging to the Lamiaceae family were extracted by means of hydrodistillation and their composition and antimicrobial activity were evaluated. About 66 components were identified by using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and among all, thymol (67.7%), oleic acid (0.5-62.1%), (-)-caryophyllene oxide (0.4-24.8%), α-pinene (1.1-19.4%), 1,8-cineole (0.2-15.4%), palmitic acid (0.32-13.28%), ( +)spathulenol (11.16%), and germacrene D (0.3-10.3%) were the most abundant in all the species tested (i.e. Thymus daenensis, Nepeta sessilifolia, Hymenocrater incanus, and Stachys inflata). In particular, only the composition of essential oils from H. incanus was completely detected (99.13%), while that of the others was only partially detected. Oxygenated monoterpenes (75.57%) were the main compounds of essential oil from T. daenensis; sesquiterpenes hydrocarbons (26.88%) were the most abundant in S. inflata; oxygenated sesquiterpenes (41.22%) were mainly detected in H. incanus essential oil, while the essential oil from N. sessilifolia was mainly composed of non-terpene and fatty acids (77.18%). Due to their slightly different composition, also the antibacterial activity was affected by the essential oil tested. Indeed, the highest antibacterial and antifungal activities were obtained with the essential oil from T. daenensis by means of the inhibition halo (39 ± 1 and 25 ± 0 mm) against Gram-positive strains such as Staphylococcus aureus and Aspergillus brasiliensis. The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) and minimal bactericidal/fungicidal concentration (MBC/MFC) of the essential oils obtained from the four species varied from 16 to 2000 μg/mL and were strictly affected by the type of microorganism tested. As an example, the essential oils from H. incanus and S. inflata were the most effective against the Gram-negative bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa (MIC 16 and 63 μg/ml, respectively), which is considered one of the most resistant bacterial strain. Therefore, the essential oils obtained from the four species contained a suitable phytocomplexes with potential applications in different commercial area such as agriculture, food, pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries. Moreover, these essential oils can be considered a valuable natural alternative to some synthetic antibiotics, thanks to their ability to control the growth of different bacteria and fungi

Perioperative hemodynamic goal-directed therapy and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis with meta-regression

INTRODUCTION: Recent data found that perioperative goal directed therapy (GDT) was effective only in higher control mortality rates (> 20%) with a relatively high heterogeneity that limited the strength of evidence. The aim of the present meta-analysis was to clearly understand which high risk patients may benefit of GDT.EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: Systematic review of randomized controlled trials with meta-analyses, including a meta-regression technique. MEDLINE, EMBASE, and The Cochrane Library databases were searched (1980-January 2015). Trials enrolling adult surgical patients and comparing the effects of GDT versus standard hemodynamic therapy were considered. The primary outcome measure was mortality. Data synthesis was obtained by using Odds Ratio (OR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) by random-effects model.EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: Fifty eight studies met the inclusion criteria (8171 participants). Pooled OR for mortality was 0.70 (95% CI 0.56-0.88, P= 0.002, no statistical heterogeneity). GDT significantly reduced mortality when it is > 10% in control group (OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.30-0.61, P< 0.00001). The meta-regression model showed that the cut off of 10% of mortality rate in control group significantly differentiates 43 studies from the other 15, with a regression coefficient b of -0.033 and a P value of 0.0001. The significant effect of GDT was driven by high risk of bias studies (OR 0.48, 95% CI 0.34-0.67, P< 0.0001).CONCLUSIONS: The present meta-analysis, adopting the meta-regression technique, suggests that GDT significantly reduces mortality even when the event control rate is > 10%

Exciton states in monolayer MoSe2 and MoTe2 probed by upconversion spectroscopy

Transitions metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) are direct semiconductors in the atomic monolayer (ML) limit with fascinating optical and spin-valley properties. The strong optical absorption of up to 20 % for a single ML is governed by excitons, electron-hole pairs bound by Coulomb attraction. Excited exciton states in MoSe$_2$ and MoTe$_2$ monolayers have so far been elusive due to their low oscillator strength and strong inhomogeneous broadening. Here we show that encapsulation in hexagonal boron nitride results in emission line width of the A:1$s$ exciton below 1.5 meV and 3 meV in our MoSe$_2$ and MoTe$_2$ monolayer samples, respectively. This allows us to investigate the excited exciton states by photoluminescence upconversion spectroscopy for both monolayer materials. The excitation laser is tuned into resonance with the A:1$s$ transition and we observe emission of excited exciton states up to 200 meV above the laser energy. We demonstrate bias control of the efficiency of this non-linear optical process. At the origin of upconversion our model calculations suggest an exciton-exciton (Auger) scattering mechanism specific to TMD MLs involving an excited conduction band thus generating high energy excitons with small wave-vectors. The optical transitions are further investigated by white light reflectivity, photoluminescence excitation and resonant Raman scattering confirming their origin as excited excitonic states in monolayer thin semiconductors.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figures, main text and appendi

Jabuticaba (Myrciaria jaboticaba) peel as a sustainable source of anthocyanins and ellagitannins delivered by phospholipid vesicles for alleviating oxidative stress in human keratinocytes

The Brazilian berry scientifically known as jabuticaba is a fruit covered by a dark purple peel that is still rich in bioactives, especially polyphenols. Considering that, this work was aimed at obtaining an extract from the peel of jabuticaba fruits, identifying its main components, loading it in phospholipid vesicles specifically tailored for skin delivery and evaluating their biological efficacy. The extract was obtained by pressurized hot water extraction (PHWE), which is considered an easy and low dissipative method, and it was rich in polyphenolic compounds, especially flavonoids (ortho-diphenols and condensed tannins), anthocyanins (cyanidin 3-O-glucoside and delphinidin 3-O-glucoside) and gallic acid, which were responsible for the high antioxidant activity detected using different colorimetric methods (DPPH, FRAP, CUPRAC and metal chelation). To improve the stability and extract effectiveness, it was incorporated into ultradeformable phospholipid vesicles (transfersomes) that were modified by adding two different polymers (hydroxyethyl cellulose and sodium hyaluronate), thus obtaining HEcellulose-transfersomes and hyaluronan-transfersomes. Transfersomes without polymers were the smallest, as the addition of the polymer led to the formation of larger vesicles that were more stable in storage. The incorporation of the extract in the vesicles promoted their beneficial activities as they were capable, to a greater extent than the solution used as reference, of counteracting the toxic effect of hydrogen peroxide and even of speeding up the healing of a wound performed in a cell monolayer, especially when vesicles were enriched with polymers. Given that, polymer enriched vesicles may represent a good strategy to produce cosmetical and cosmeceutical products with beneficial properties for skin

G-CNV: A GPU-based tool for preparing data to detect CNVs with read-depth methods

Copy number variations (CNVs) are the most prevalent types of structural variations (SVs) in the human genome and are involved in a wide range of common human diseases. Different computational methods have been devised to detect this type of SVs and to study how they are implicated in human diseases. Recently, computational methods based on high-throughput sequencing (HTS) are increasingly used. The majority of these methods focus on mapping short-read sequences generated from a donor against a reference genome to detect signatures distinctive of CNVs. In particular, read-depth based methods detect CNVs by analyzing genomic regions with significantly different read-depth from the other ones. The pipeline analysis of these methods consists of four main stages: (i) data preparation, (ii) data normalization, (iii) CNV regions identification, and (iv) copy number estimation. However, available tools do not support most of the operations required at the first two stages of this pipeline. Typically, they start the analysis by building the read-depth signal from pre-processed alignments. Therefore, third-party tools must be used to perform most of the preliminary operations required to build the read-depth signal. These data-intensive operations can be efficiently parallelized on graphics processing units (GPUs). In this article, we present G-CNV, a GPU-based tool devised to perform the common operations required at the first two stages of the analysis pipeline. G-CNV is able to filter low-quality read sequences, to mask low-quality nucleotides, to remove adapter sequences, to remove duplicated read sequences, to map the short-reads, to resolve multiple mapping ambiguities, to build the read-depth signal, and to normalize it. G-CNV can be efficiently used as a third-party tool able to prepare data for the subsequent read-depth signal generation and analysis. Moreover, it can also be integrated in CNV detection tools to generate read-depth signals

Bimodal Phase Diagram of the Superfluid Density in LaAlO3/SrTiO3 Revealed by an Interfacial Waveguide Resonator

We explore the superconducting phase diagram of the two-dimensional electron system at the LaAlO3/SrTiO3 interface by monitoring the frequencies of the cavity modes of a coplanar waveguide resonator fabricated in the interface itself. We determine the phase diagram of the superconducting transition as a function of temperature and electrostatic gating, finding that both the superfluid density and the transition temperature follow a dome shape, but that the two are not monotonically related. The ground state of this 2DES is interpreted as a Josephson junction array, where a transition from long- to short-range order occurs as a function of the electronic doping. The synergy between correlated oxides and superconducting circuits is revealed to be a promising route to investigate these exotic compounds, complementary to standard magneto-transport measurements.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures and 10 pages of supplementary materia

Deterministic and stochastic P systems for modelling cellular processes

This paper presents two approaches based on metabolic and stochastic P systems, together with their associated analysis methods, for modelling biological sys- tems and illustrates their use through two case studies.Kingdom's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council EP/ E017215/1Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United Kingdom BB/D019613/1Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/United Kingdom BB/F01855X/