Melatonin and urological cancers: A new therapeutic approach

Urological cancers are responsible for thousands of cancer-related deaths around the world. Despite all developments in therapeutic approaches for cancer therapy, the absence of efficient treatments is a critical and vital problematic issue for physicians and researchers. Furthermore, routine medical therapies contribute to several undesirable adverse events for patients, reducing life quality and survival time. Therefore, many attempts are needed to explore potent alternative or complementary treatments for great outcomes. Melatonin has multiple beneficial potential effects, including anticancer properties. Melatonin in combination with chemoradiation therapy or even alone could suppress urological cancers through affecting essential cellular pathways. This review discusses current evidence reporting the beneficial effect of melatonin in urological malignancies, including prostate cancer, bladder cancer, and renal cancer. © 2020 The Author(s)

An Efficient Framework for Improving Microgrid Resilience against Islanding with Battery Swapping Stations

In this paper, an efficient bi-level framework is proposed to enhance the resilience of microgrids (MGs) against islanding due to low probability-high impact events by incorporating battery swapping stations (BSSs). In the emergency condition, MG solves the upper-level of the proposed model to report the desired energy transaction including surplus energy and unsupplied loads during the islanding period to the BSSs coordinator. The lower-level problem will be solved with an iterative algorithm by BSSs coordinator to report different plans of energy transactions and their prices to the MG during the emergency period. The price of each energy transaction plan is determined based on a bonus mechanism. Finally, MG will choose the best plan of energy trading considering a new proposed perspective of resilience improvement. Furthermore, a new formulation for BSS operation with fewer variables in comparison to the previous works is proposed in this paper. Simulations are carried out on an MG with two BSSs to verify the proposed model

Synthesis of Polyfunctionalized Amino Furans with Long Conjugated Aromatic Systems Using Nucleophilic Aromatic Isocyanide

Polyfunctionalized amino furans with long conjugated aromatic systems have been synthesized by three component reaction of aldehydes, acetylenic esters and aromatic nucleophilic isocyanide

Review of dynamic positioning control in maritime microgrid systems

For many offshore activities, including offshore oil and gas exploration and offshore wind farm construction, it is essential to keep the position and heading of the vessel stable. The dynamic positioning system is a progressive technology, which is extensively used in shipping and other maritime structures. To maintain the vessels or platforms from displacement, its thrusters are used automatically to control and stabilize the position and heading of vessels in sea state disturbances. The theory of dynamic positioning has been studied and developed in terms of control techniques to achieve greater accuracy and reduce ship movement caused by environmental disturbance for more than 30 years. This paper reviews the control strategies and architecture of the DPS in marine vessels. In addition, it suggests possible control principles and makes a comparison between the advantages and disadvantages of existing literature. Some details for future research on DP control challenges are discussed in this paper

In vitro anti-leishmanial activity of methanolic extracts of Calendula officinalis flowers, Datura stramonium seeds, and Salvia officinalis leaves

Aim: The anti-leishmanial activity of methanolic extracts of Calendula officinalis flowers, Datura stramonium seeds, and Salvia officinalis leaves against extracellular (promastigote) and intracellular (amastigote) forms of Leishmania major were evaluated in this study. Method: In the first stage, promastigote forms of L. major, were treated with different doses of the plant extracts in a 96-well tissue-culture microplate and IC50 values for each extract were measured with colorimetric MTT assay. In the second stage, macrophage cells were infected with L. major promastigotes. Infected macrophages were treated with plant extracts. Then the macrophages were stained with Gimsa and the number of infected macrophages and amastigotes were counted with a light microscope. Results: The results indicated that the plant extracts inhibited the growth of promastigotes and amastigotes of L. major. Inhibitory concentrations (IC50) for promastigote assay were 108.19, 155.15, and 184.32 μg7·mL-1 for C. officinalis flowers, D. stramonium seeds and S. officinalis, respectively. The extracts also reduced the number of amastigotes in macrophage cells from 264 for control group to 88, 97, and 102 for test groups. Although the anti-leishmanial activity of the extracts were not comparable with the standard drug, miltefosine; but they showed significant efficiency in reducing the number of amastigotes in macrophages, in comparison with the control group (P < 0.001). These plant extracts had lower toxicity compared with miltefosine. Conclusion: This study demonstrates the potential efficacy of the methanolic extracts of C. officinalis flowers, D. stramonium seeds, and S. officinalis leaves to control of cutaneous leishmaniasis. © 2014 China Pharmaceutical University