Formulation, Characterisation And In Vitro Skin Irritation Studies Of Jasminum Officinale And Anthemis Nobilis Essential Oil Nanoemulsion For Aedes AEGYPTI Repellent Activity

Mosquitoes are important vectors responsible for the transmission of many pathogens that cause major human morbidity and mortality. Aedes aegypti is the main species engaged in the transmission of dengue fever. Natural repellents such as essential oils may provide a means of protection from mosquito bites that are safer and more pleasant to use. However, their effectiveness decreases relatively fast over time due to high volatility. Nanoemulsion formulation enables to control the volatility of essential oil and thereby extends the duration of repellency. Therefore, oil-in-water nanoemulsion containing the mixture of Jasminum officinale and Anthemis nobilis essential oils were formulated via ultrasonication, and characterised with respect to droplet size, polydispersity index (PDI), zeta potential and storage stability. Gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analysis revealed that oxygenated monoterpenes and diterpenes constituted 31.14% and 21.20% of J. officinale, respectively. For A. nobilis, oxygenated monoterpenes accounted for 84.79% of the compounds identified. The combination of J. officinale and A. nobilis in a 1:1 ratio exhibited significantly (p < 0.05) higher repellency against Ae. aegypti using a rat model for 120 min than the individual oils. The droplet size of nanoemulsions; nJC1, nJC2 and nJC3 were 264.23, 291.43 and 351.37 nm, respectively. The zeta potential and PDI of the nanoemulsions were -32.77 to -46.93 mV and 0.232 to 0.264, respectively

Testing of a culture protocol for converting mouse embryonic stem cells into neurons

BACKGROUND: Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) are pluripotent cells that are present in the inner cell mass of blastocyst-stage embryos. They are pluripotent in that they are able to differentiate into all derivatives of the primary germ layers, including ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm, thus generating every cell type in the body. Directed differentiation of ESCs into the cell line of interest can help to replace cells lost due to injury or disease. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to culture mouse embryonic stem cells with retinoic acid to achieve neuronal differentiation and to confirm neural conversion using immunocytochemistry. METHODS: This protocol, referred to as the 4-/4+ protocol, involves spontaneous differentiation of mESCs into embryoid bodies in suspension culture for 4 days and addition of 0.5 μM RA on the 4th day. The cells were allowed to aggregate in the presence of RA for another four days and then plated on laminin-coated dishes on the 8th day. They were plated both as intact aggregates and post-disassociation with trypsin. In both cases, it was found that they gave out flat cells tightly adherent to the surface with an initial spindle shaped bipolar morphology that gradually progressed to pyramidal shaped cells with multiple neurites. Immunocytochemistry was used to confirm the presence of neurons by using a neuron specific isoform of monoclonal βIII-Tubulin. RESULTS: The results indicate that mouse embryonic stem cells in the presence of retinoic acid differentiate into cells that phenotypically resemble neurons. These cells express the neuronal marker, βIII-Tubulin, confirming that they are neurons. CONCLUSION: Mouse embryonic stem cells placed in suspension culture formed aggregates called embryoid bodies. This when exposed to retinoic acid differentiated into cells phenotypically resembling neurons. These neuron-like cells expressed βIII-Tubulin which is a marker for neurons. Thus RA induces differentiation of stem cells into neurons

Genotoxicity Assessment Of Standardised Root Extract Of Eurycoma Longifolia Jack And Synthesis Of Some Benzimidazole Derivatives And Evaluation Of Their Anti-Cancer Potential

In this study, the genotoxic potential of standardised root extract, F2 of Eurycoma longifolia Jack has been assessed using the mouse lymphoma assay (MLA) in accordance with OECD guideline. This work serves to be the first test to evaluate the safety profile of E. longifolia using the in vitro mammalian system. The MLA is capable of detecting a broad spectrum of mutational events include point mutations and chromosomal abberations. The L5178Y/tk+/- cells were treated with 1 to 50 μg/mL of the root extract in the absence and presence of S9 metabolic activation for 3-h. A 24-h treatment assay was performed without the S9 metabolic activation

Intersubject Regularity in the Intrinsic Shape of Human V1

Previous studies have reported considerable intersubject variability in the three-dimensional geometry of the human primary visual cortex (V1). Here we demonstrate that much of this variability is due to extrinsic geometric features of the cortical folds, and that the intrinsic shape of V1 is similar across individuals. V1 was imaged in ten ex vivo human hemispheres using high-resolution (200 μm) structural magnetic resonance imaging at high field strength (7 T). Manual tracings of the stria of Gennari were used to construct a surface representation, which was computationally flattened into the plane with minimal metric distortion. The instrinsic shape of V1 was determined from the boundary of the planar representation of the stria. An ellipse provided a simple parametric shape model that was a good approximation to the boundary of flattened V1. The aspect ration of the best-fitting ellipse was found to be consistent across subject, with a mean of 1.85 and standard deviation of 0.12. Optimal rigid alignment of size-normalized V1 produced greater overlap than that achieved by previous studies using different registration methods. A shape analysis of published macaque data indicated that the intrinsic shape of macaque V1 is also stereotyped, and similar to the human V1 shape. Previoud measurements of the functional boundary of V1 in human and macaque are in close agreement with these results

Ultrasonic Time Synchronization and Ranging on Smartphones

Abstract-In this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a platform that can be used for time synchronization and indoor positioning of mobile devices. The platform uses the Time-Difference-Of-Arrival (TDOA) of multiple ultrasonic chirps broadcast from a network of beacons placed throughout the environment to find an initial location as well as synchronize a receiver&apos;s clock with the infrastructure. These chirps encode identification data and ranging information that can be used to compute the receiver&apos;s location. Once the clocks have been synchronized, the system can continue performing localization directly using Time-of-Flight (TOF) ranging as opposed to TDOA. This provides similar position accuracy with fewer beacons (for tens of minutes) until the mobile device clock dirfts enough that a TDOA signal is once again required. Our hardware platform uses RF-based time synchronization to distribute clock synchronization from a subset of infrastructure beacons connected to a GPS source. Mobile devices use a novel time synchronization technique leverages the continuously freerunning audio sampling subsystem of a smartphone to synchronize with global time. Once synchronized, each device can determine an accurate proximity from as little as one beacon using Time-Of-Flight (TOF) measurements. This significantly decreases the number of beacons required to cover an indoor space and improves performance in the face of obstructions. We show through experiments that this approach outperforms the Network Time Protocol (NTP) on smartphones by an order of magnitude, providing an average 720µs synchronization accuracy with clock drift rates as low as 2ppm

Cortical Folding Patterns and Predicting Cytoarchitecture

The human cerebral cortex is made up of a mosaic of structural areas, frequently referred to as Brodmann areas (BAs). Despite the widespread use of cortical folding patterns to perform ad hoc estimations of the locations of the BAs, little is understood regarding 1) how variable the position of a given BA is with respect to the folds, 2) whether the location of some BAs is more variable than others, and 3) whether the variability is related to the level of a BA in a putative cortical hierarchy. We use whole-brain histology of 10 postmortem human brains and surface-based analysis to test how well the folds predict the locations of the BAs. We show that higher order cortical areas exhibit more variability than primary and secondary areas and that the folds are much better predictors of the BAs than had been previously thought. These results further highlight the significance of cortical folding patterns and suggest a common mechanism for the development of the folds and the cytoarchitectonic fields.National Center for Research Resources (U.S.) (P41-RR14075)National Center for Research Resources (U.S.) (R01-RR16594-01A1)National Center for Research Resources (U.S.) (NCRR BIRN Morphometric Project BIRN002, U24 RR021382)National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (U.S.) (R01 EB001550)National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (U.S.) (R01 EB006758)National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U.S.) (R01 NS052585-01)Mental Illness and Neuroscience Discovery (MIND) InstituteNational Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH Roadmap for Medical Research (grant U54 EB005149))Hermann von Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher ForschungszentrenDeutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)National Institutes of Health. National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and BioengineeringNational Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (U.S.)National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.

The intrinsic shape of human and macaque primary visual cortex

Previous studies have reported considerable variability in primary visual cortex (V1) shape in both humans and macaques. Here, we demonstrate that much of this variability is due to the pattern of cortical folds particular to an individual and that V1 shape is similar among individual humans and macaques as well as between these 2 species. Human V1 was imaged ex vivo using high-resolution (200 mm) magnetic resonance imaging at 7 T. Macaque V1 was identified in published histological serial section data. Manual tracings of the stria of Gennari were used to construct a V1 surface, which was computationally flattened with minimal metric distortion of the cortical surface. Accurate flattening allowed investigation of intrinsic geometric features of cortex, which are largely independent of the highly variable cortical folds. The intrinsic shape of V1 was found to be similar across human subjects using both nonparametric boundary matching and a simple elliptical shape model fit to the data and is very close to that of the macaque monkey. This result agrees with predictions derived from current models of V1 topography. In addition, V1 shape similarity suggests that similar developmental mechanisms are responsible for establishing V1 shape in these 2 species

The Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) multi-site quality assurance program for cryopreserved Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells

The Center for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Immunology (CHAVI) consortium was established to determine the host and virus factors associated with HIV transmission, infection and containment of virus replication, with the goal of advancing the development of an HIV protective vaccine. Studies to meet this goal required the use of cryopreserved Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cell (PBMC) specimens, and therefore it was imperative that a quality assurance (QA) oversight program be developed to monitor PBMC samples obtained from study participants at multiple international sites. Nine site-affiliated laboratories in Africa and the USA collected and processed PBMCs, and cryopreserved PBMC were shipped to CHAVI repositories in Africa and the USA for long-term storage. A three-stage program was designed, based on Good Clinical Laboratory Practices (GCLP), to monitor PBMC integrity at each step of this process. The first stage evaluated the integrity of fresh PBMCs for initial viability, overall yield, and processing time at the site-affiliated laboratories (Stage 1); for the second stage, the repositories determined post-thaw viability and cell recovery of cryopreserved PBMC, received from the site-affiliated laboratories (Stage 2); the third stage assessed the long-term specimen storage at each repository (Stage 3). Overall, the CHAVI PBMC QA oversight program results highlight the relative importance of each of these stages to the ultimate goal of preserving specimen integrity from peripheral blood collection to long-term repository storage