Dual-stage triterpenoids from an African medicinal plant targeting the malaria parasite

Sixteen triterpenoids (1–16), previously isolated from the aerial parts of the African medicinal plant Momordica balsamina or obtained by derivatization, were evaluated for their activity against liver stages of Plasmodium berghei, measuring the luminescence intensity in Huh-7 cells infected with a firefly lucif erase-expressing P. berghei line, PbGFP-Luccon. Toxicity of compounds (1–16) was assessed on the same cell line through the fluorescence measurement of cell confluency. The highest activity was displayed by a derivative bearing two acetyl residues, karavoate B (7), which led to a dose-dependent decrease in the P. berghei infection rate, exhibiting a very significant activity at the lowest concentration employed (1 lM) and no toxicity towards the Huh-7 cells. It is noteworthy that, in previous studies, this compound was found to be a strong inhibitor of blood-stages of Plasmodium falciparum, thus displaying a dual-stage antimalarial activity.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Supramolecular Amino Acid Based Hydrogels: Probing the Contribution of Additive Molecules using NMR Spectroscopy

Supramolecular hydrogels are composed of self-assembled solid networks that restrict the flow of water. l-Phenylalanine is the smallest molecule reported to date to form gel networks in water, and it is of particular interest due to its crystalline gel state. Single and multi-component hydrogels of l-phenylalanine are used herein as model materials to develop an NMR-based analytical approach to gain insight into the mechanisms of supramolecular gelation. Structure and composition of the gel fibres were probed using PXRD, solid-state NMR experiments and microscopic techniques. Solution-state NMR studies probed the properties of free gelator molecules in an equilibrium with bound molecules. The dynamics of exchange at the gel/solution interfaces was investigated further using high-resolution magic angle spinning (HR-MAS) and saturation transfer difference (STD) NMR experiments. This approach allowed the identification of which additive molecules contributed in modifying the material properties

Study of dimuon production in Indium-Indium collisions with the NA60 experiment

The NA60 experiment at the CERN-SPS is devoted to the study of dimuon production in heavy-ion and proton-nucleus collisions. We present preliminary results from the analysis of Indium-Indium collisions at 158 GeV per nucleon. The topics covered are low mass vector meson production, J/psi production and suppression, and the feasibility of the open charm measurement from the dimuon continuum in the mass range below the J/psi peak.Comment: Contribution at XXXXth Rencontres de Moriond, "QCD and High Energy Hadronic Interactions

Halogen effects on the solid-state packing of phenylalanine derivatives and the resultant gelation properties

Phenylalanine is an important amino acid both biologically, essential to human health, and industrially, as a building block of artificial sweeteners. Our interest in this particular amino acid and its derivatives lies with its ability to form gels in a number of solvents. We present here the studies of the influence of halogen addition to the aromatic ring on the gelation properties and we analyse the crystal structures of a number of these materials to elucidate the trends in their behaviour based on the halogen addition to the aromatic group and the interactions that result

Evidence for radial flow of thermal dileptons in high-energy nuclear collisions

The NA60 experiment at the CERN SPS has studied low-mass dimuon production in 158 AGeV In-In collisions. An excess of pairs above the known meson decays has been reported before. We now present precision results on the associated transverse momentum spectra. The slope parameter Teff extracted from the spectra rises with dimuon mass up to the rho, followed by a sudden decline above. While the initial rise is consistent with the expectations for radial flow of a hadronic decay source, the decline signals a transition to an emission source with much smaller flow. This may well represent the first direct evidence for thermal radiation of partonic origin in nuclear collisions.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

ϕ\phi Meson Production in In-In Collisions and the ϕ\phi Puzzle

The NA60 experiment measured dimuon production in In-In collisions at 158 AGeV. This paper presents a high statistics measurement of $\phi\to\mu\mu$ with the specific objective to provide insight on the $\phi$ puzzle, i.e. the difference in the inverse $T$ slopes and absolute yields measured by NA49 and NA50 in the kaon and lepton channel, respectively. Transverse momentum distributions were studied as a function of centrality. The slope parameter $T$ shows a rapid increase with centrality, followed by a saturation. Variations of $T$ with the fit range of the order of 15 MeV were observed, possibly as a consequence of radial flow. The $\phi$ meson yield normalized to the number of participants increases with centrality and is consistently higher than the yield measured by the NA49 experiment at any centrality.Comment: 4 Pages, 2 Figures. Proceedings of the 20$^{th}$ International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus Nucleus Collision

Photoproduction at collider energies: from RHIC and HERA to the LHC

We present the mini-proceedings of the workshop on ``Photoproduction at collider energies: from RHIC and HERA to the LHC'' held at the European Centre for Theoretical Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT*, Trento) from January 15 to 19, 2007. The workshop gathered both theorists and experimentalists to discuss the current status of investigations of high-energy photon-induced processes at different colliders (HERA, RHIC, and Tevatron) as well as preparations for extension of these studies at the LHC. The main physics topics covered were: (i) small-$x$ QCD in photoproduction studies with protons and in electromagnetic (aka. ultraperipheral) nucleus-nucleus collisions, (ii) hard diffraction physics at hadron colliders, and (iii) photon-photon collisions at very high energies: electroweak and beyond the Standard Model processes. These mini-proceedings consist of an introduction and short summaries of the talks presented at the meeting

Low Mass Dimuon Production in Indium-Indium Collisions at the CERN SPS

NA60 is a fixed-target experiment at the CERN SPS which measured dimuon production in nucleus-nucleus and proton-nucleus collisions. In this paper we report on a precision measurement of low-mass muon pairs in 158 AGeV indium-indium collisions. A significant excess of pairs is observed above the yield expected from neutral meson decays. The excess can be isolated by subtraction of expected sources, thanks to the excellent mass resolution and large sample size.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, Contribution at XLIst Rencontres de Moriond, "QCD and High Energy Hadronic Interactions

First Measurement of the rho Spectral Function in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions

We report on a precision measurement of low-mass muon pairs in 158 AGeV indium-indium collisions at the CERN SPS. A significant excess of pairs is observed above the yield expected from neutral meson decays. The unprecedented sample size of 360 000 dimuons and the good mass resolution of about 2% allow us to isolate the excess by subtraction of the decay sources. The shape of the resulting mass spectrum is consistent with a dominant contribution from pi+pi-->rho-->mu+mu- annihilation. The associated space-time averaged rho spectral function shows a strong broadening, but essentially no shift in mass. This may rule out theoretical models linking hadron masse

Thermal dileptons at SPS energies

Clear signs of excess dileptons above the known sources were found at the SPS since long. However, a real clarification of these observations was only recently achieved by NA60, measuring dimuons with unprecedented precision in 158A GeV, In-In collisions. The excess mass spectrum in the region M<1 GeV is consistent with a dominant contribution from pi+pi- -> rho -> mu+mu- annihilation. The associated rho spectral function shows a strong broadening, but essentially no shift in mass. In the region M>1 GeV, the excess is found to be prompt, not due to enhanced charm production. The inverse slope parameter Teff associated with the transverse momentum spectra rises with mass up to the rho, followed by a sudden decline above. While the initial rise, coupled to a hierarchy in hadron freeze-out, points to radial flow of a hadronic decay source, the decline above signals a transition to a low-flow source, presumably of partonic origin. The mass spectra show at low transverse momenta the steep rise towards low masses characteristic for Planck-like radiation. The polarization of the excess referred to the Collins Soper frame is found to be isotropic. All observations are consistent with the interpretation of the excess as thermal radiation.Comment: Prepared for 20th International Conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions: Quark Matter 2008 (QM2008), Jaipur, India, 4-10 Feb. 200