Constituintes químicos de Vernonia scorpioides (Lam) Pers. (Asteraceae)

The chemical investigation of hexane and ethanol extracts from the aerial parts of Vernonia scorpioides resulted in the isolation and characterization of a new polyacetylene lactone, rel-4-dihydro-4β-hydroxy-5a-octa-2,4,6-triynyl-furan-2-(5H)-one, along with the new ethyl 3,4-dihydroxy-6,8,10-triynyl-dodecanoate, and seven known compounds: taraxasteryl acetate, lupeyl acetate, lupeol, lupenone, β-sitosterol, stigmasterol and luteolin. The structure of all compounds was determined by spectrometric techniques (HR-ESI-MS, ¹H and 13C NMR and IV) and comparison with published spectral data

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Terpenoids, flavonoids and other constituents of Eupatorium betonicaeforme (Asteraceae)

A new acylated kaurene diterpene, characterized as 15alpha-decanoyloxy-kaur-16-en-19-oic acid, along with nine known compounds: pentacosanoic acid, 24alpha-ethyl-5alpha-cholesta-7,22E-dien-3beta-ol, 15alpha-hydroxy-kaur-16-en-19-oic acid, 8beta-angeloyloxy-9beta,10beta-dihydroxy-1-oxo-germacra-4E,11(13)dien-12,6alpha-olide, 3beta-hydroxyeicosan-1,5beta-olide, taraxasteryl acetate, 7-O-methylkaempferol, kaempferol, and nepetin were isolated from the flowers of Eupatorium betonicaeforme (Asteraceae). In addition, from the aerial parts were isolated taraxasteryl acetate and alpha- and beta-amyrin, while the mixture of beta-sitosterol and stigmasterol, and 6-acetyl-2,2-dimethylchroman-4-one were isolated from the roots. The structure elucidation of all compounds was performed by spectroscopic analysis and comparison with published data from literature

Nematicidal and larvicidal activities of the essential oils from aerial parts of Pectis oligocephala and Pectis apodocephala Baker

The chemical composition of the essential oils from aerial parts of Pectis apodocephala and Pectis oligocephala were analyzed by GC-MS. The essential oils of these species were predominantly constituted by monoterpenes. Geranial (42.9-44.5%), neral (32.2-34.2%) and alpha-pinene (10.7-11.4%) were the main constituents in the oil of P. apodocephala, while p-cymene (50.3-70.9%) and thymol (24.4-44.7%), were the prevalent compounds in the oil of P. oligocephala. The essential oils were tested against the root knot nematode Meloidogyne incognita and Aedes aegypti larvae survival. The results obtained show that both essential oils exhibited significant activity and could be considered as potent natural namaticidal and larvicidal agents.A composição química dos óleos essenciais das partes aéreas de Pectis apodocephala e Pectis oligocephala foi analisada por CG-EM. Os óleos essenciais destas espécies foram predominantemente constituídos por monoterpenos. Geranial (42, 9-44, 5%), neral (32, 2-34, 2%) e alfa-pineno (10, 7-11, 4%) foram os constituintes majoritários no óleo de P. apodocephala, enquanto p-cimeno (50, 3-70, 9%) e timol (24, 4-44, 7%), foram os compostos prevalentes no óleo de P. oligocephala. Ambos os óleos foram testados contra o nematóide Meloidogyne incognita e larvas do mosquito Aedes aegypti no terceiro estágio. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que os óleos exibem significante atividade e podem, portanto, ser considerados como potenciais agentes nematicida e larvicida naturais

Constituintes químicos de Vernonia chalybaea mart. Chemical constituents of Vernonia chalybaea mart.

<abstract language="eng">The chemical investigation of the hexane and ethanol extracts from aerial parts of Vernonia chalybaea conducted to the isolation and characterization of a new aliphatic tetrahydroxyl ether, along with a series of known compounds such as 4 &#945;,10 &#945;-epoxyaromadendrane, friedelin, taraxasteryl acetate, pseudotaraxasteryl acetate, lupeyl acetate, lupeol, &#945;-amiryn, &#946;-amiryn, &#946;-sitosterol, stigmasterol, 2,3-dimethyl-1,2,3-tri-hydroxybuthanol, angophorol, angophorol-7-O-glucoside, angophorol-7-O-rutinoside, 3,7-dimethoxy-5,3',4'-trihydroxyflavone and acacetin. The structures of all compounds were determined by spectroscopic analysis and comparison with published spectral data