Antibacterial and Anti-Inflammatory Activities of Anacardium occidentale Leaves and Bark Extracts

Anacardium occidentale is a local medicinal plant used in ethno medicine for the treatment of diarrhea, constipation,pain and inflammation. The aqueous and ethanolic extracts of this plant parts were assessed for antiinflammatory and antibacterial activities using experimental animal model and agar disc diffusion methods respectively. Results show that the ethanolic extract of the plant were more efficacious than the aqueous extract in inhibiting the carrageenan induced paw oedema in rats in a non dose-dependent manner( P>0.05).No significant difference was found between the ethanolic extract of the leaves and bark (P>0.05). Also, the antibacterial activity was apparently higher in ethanolic extract than in aqueous extract for both leaves and barkwith the bark extract displaying a  significantly (P<0.05) higher activity compared to the leaves extract. The results of this study therefore justify the use of this plant in the treatment of  inflammation and bacterial infections.Keywords: Antibacterial, Anti inflammatory, Anacardium occidental

Next-generation sequencing of the CHO cell transcriptome

Meeting abstract from 22nd European Society for Animal Cell Technology(ESACT) Meeting on Cell Based Technologies Vienna, Austria. 15-18 May 2011(VLID)90656

Solving random boundary heat model using the finite difference method under mean square convergence

"This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Cortés, J. C., Romero, J. V., Roselló, M. D., Sohaly, MA. Solving random boundary heat model using the finite difference method under mean square convergence. Comp and Math Methods. 2019; 1:e1026. https://doi.org/10.1002/cmm4.1026 , which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/cmm4.1026. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving."[EN] This contribution is devoted to construct numerical approximations to the solution of the one-dimensional boundary value problem for the heat model with uncertainty in the diffusion coefficient. Approximations are constructed via random numerical schemes. This approach permits discussing the effect of the random diffusion coefficient, which is assumed a random variable. We establish results about the consistency and stability of the random difference scheme using mean square convergence. Finally, an illustrative example is presented.Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Grant Number: MTM2017-89664-PCortés, J.; Romero, J.; Roselló, M.; Sohaly, M. (2019). Solving random boundary heat model using the finite difference method under mean square convergence. Computational and Mathematical Methods. 1(3):1-15. https://doi.org/10.1002/cmm4.1026S11513Han, X., & Kloeden, P. E. (2017). Random Ordinary Differential Equations and Their Numerical Solution. Probability Theory and Stochastic Modelling. doi:10.1007/978-981-10-6265-0Villafuerte, L., Braumann, C. A., Cortés, J.-C., & Jódar, L. (2010). Random differential operational calculus: Theory and applications. Computers & Mathematics with Applications, 59(1), 115-125. doi:10.1016/j.camwa.2009.08.061Logan, J. D. (2004). Partial Differential Equations on Bounded Domains. Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics, 121-171. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-8879-9_4Cannon, J. R. (1964). A Cauchy problem for the heat equation. Annali di Matematica Pura ed Applicata, 66(1), 155-165. doi:10.1007/bf02412441LinPPY.On The Numerical Solution of The Heat Equation in Unbounded Domains[PhD thesis].New York NY:New York University;1993.Li, J.-R., & Greengard, L. (2007). On the numerical solution of the heat equation I: Fast solvers in free space. Journal of Computational Physics, 226(2), 1891-1901. doi:10.1016/j.jcp.2007.06.021Han, H., & Huang, Z. (2002). Exact and approximating boundary conditions for the parabolic problems on unbounded domains. Computers & Mathematics with Applications, 44(5-6), 655-666. doi:10.1016/s0898-1221(02)00180-3Han, H., & Huang, Z. (2002). A class of artificial boundary conditions for heat equation in unbounded domains. Computers & Mathematics with Applications, 43(6-7), 889-900. doi:10.1016/s0898-1221(01)00329-7Strikwerda, J. C. (2004). Finite Difference Schemes and Partial Differential Equations, Second Edition. doi:10.1137/1.9780898717938Kloeden, P. E., & Platen, E. (1992). Numerical Solution of Stochastic Differential Equations. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-12616-5Øksendal, B. (2003). Stochastic Differential Equations. Universitext. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-14394-6Holden, H., Øksendal, B., Ubøe, J., & Zhang, T. (2010). Stochastic Partial Differential Equations. doi:10.1007/978-0-387-89488-1El-Tawil, M. A., & Sohaly, M. A. (2012). Mean square convergent three points finite difference scheme for random partial differential equations. Journal of the Egyptian Mathematical Society, 20(3), 188-204. doi:10.1016/j.joems.2012.08.017Cortés, J.-C., Navarro-Quiles, A., Romero, J.-V., Roselló, M.-D., & Sohaly, M. A. (2018). Solving the random Cauchy one-dimensional advection–diffusion equation: Numerical analysis and computing. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics, 330, 920-936. doi:10.1016/j.cam.2017.02.001Cortés, J. C., Jódar, L., Villafuerte, L., & Villanueva, R. J. (2007). Computing mean square approximations of random diffusion models with source term. Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, 76(1-3), 44-48. doi:10.1016/j.matcom.2007.01.020Cortés, J. C., Jódar, L., & Villafuerte, L. (2009). Random linear-quadratic mathematical models: Computing explicit solutions and applications. Mathematics and Computers in Simulation, 79(7), 2076-2090. doi:10.1016/j.matcom.2008.11.008Henderson, D., & Plaschko, P. (2006). Stochastic Differential Equations in Science and Engineering. doi:10.1142/580

Neuroimaging correlates of brain injury in Wilson's disease: a multimodal, whole-brain MRI study

Wilson's disease is an autosomal-recessive disorder of copper metabolism with neurological and hepatic presentations. Chelation therapy is used to 'de-copper' patients but neurological outcomes remain unpredictable. A range of neuroimaging abnormalities have been described and may provide insights into disease mechanisms, in addition to prognostic and monitoring biomarkers. Previous quantitative MRI analyses have focussed on specific sequences or regions of interest, often stratifying chronically-treated patients according to persisting symptoms as opposed to initial presentation. In this cross-sectional study, we performed a combination of unbiased, whole-brain analyses on T1-weighted, fluid-attenuated inversion recovery, diffusion-weighted and susceptibility-weighted imaging data from 40 prospectively-recruited patients with Wilson's disease (age range 16-68). We compared patients with neurological (n = 23) and hepatic (n = 17) presentations to determine the neuroradiological sequelae of the initial brain injury. We also subcategorized patients according to recent neurological status, classifying those with neurological presentations or deterioration in the preceding six months as having 'active' disease. This allowed us to compare patients with active (n = 5) and stable (n = 35) disease and identify imaging correlates for persistent neurological deficits and copper indices in chronically-treated, stable patients. Using a combination of voxel-based morphometry and region-of-interest volumetric analyses, we demonstrate that grey matter volumes are lower in the basal ganglia, thalamus, brainstem, cerebellum, anterior insula and orbitofrontal cortex when comparing patients with neurological and hepatic presentations. In chronically-treated, stable patients, the severity of neurological deficits correlated with grey matter volumes in similar, predominantly subcortical regions. In contrast, the severity of neurological deficits did not correlate with the volume of white matter hyperintensities, calculated using an automated lesion segmentation algorithm. Using tract-based spatial statistics, increasing neurological severity in chronically-treated patients was associated with decreasing axial diffusivity in white matter tracts whereas increasing serum non-caeruloplasmin-bound ('free') copper and active disease were associated with distinct patterns of increasing mean, axial and radial diffusivity. Whole-brain quantitative susceptibility mapping identified increased iron deposition in the putamen, cingulate and medial frontal cortices of patients with neurological presentations relative to those with hepatic presentations and neurological severity was associated with iron deposition in widespread cortical regions in chronically-treated patients. Our data indicate that composite measures of subcortical atrophy provide useful prognostic biomarkers, whereas abnormal mean, axial and radial diffusivity are promising monitoring biomarkers. Finally, deposition of brain iron in response to copper accumulation may directly contribute to neurodegeneration in Wilson's disease

Adaptive Lévy processes and area-restricted search in human foraging

A considerable amount of research has claimed that animals’ foraging behaviors display movement lengths with power-law distributed tails, characteristic of Lévy flights and Lévy walks. Though these claims have recently come into question, the proposal that many animals forage using Lévy processes nonetheless remains. A Lévy process does not consider when or where resources are encountered, and samples movement lengths independently of past experience. However, Lévy processes too have come into question based on the observation that in patchy resource environments resource-sensitive foraging strategies, like area-restricted search, perform better than Lévy flights yet can still generate heavy-tailed distributions of movement lengths. To investigate these questions further, we tracked humans as they searched for hidden resources in an open-field virtual environment, with either patchy or dispersed resource distributions. Supporting previous research, for both conditions logarithmic binning methods were consistent with Lévy flights and rank-frequency methods–comparing alternative distributions using maximum likelihood methods–showed the strongest support for bounded power-law distributions (truncated Lévy flights). However, goodness-of-fit tests found that even bounded power-law distributions only accurately characterized movement behavior for 4 (out of 32) participants. Moreover, paths in the patchy environment (but not the dispersed environment) showed a transition to intensive search following resource encounters, characteristic of area-restricted search. Transferring paths between environments revealed that paths generated in the patchy environment were adapted to that environment. Our results suggest that though power-law distributions do not accurately reflect human search, Lévy processes may still describe movement in dispersed environments, but not in patchy environments–where search was area-restricted. Furthermore, our results indicate that search strategies cannot be inferred without knowing how organisms respond to resources–as both patched and dispersed conditions led to similar Lévy-like movement distributions

Exploring Curved Superspace

We systematically analyze Riemannian manifolds M that admit rigid supersymmetry, focusing on four-dimensional N=1 theories with a U(1)_R symmetry. We find that M admits a single supercharge, if and only if it is a Hermitian manifold. The supercharge transforms as a scalar on M. We then consider the restrictions imposed by the presence of additional supercharges. Two supercharges of opposite R-charge exist on certain fibrations of a two-torus over a Riemann surface. Upon dimensional reduction, these give rise to an interesting class of supersymmetric geometries in three dimensions. We further show that compact manifolds admitting two supercharges of equal R-charge must be hyperhermitian. Finally, four supercharges imply that M is locally isometric to M_3 x R, where M_3 is a maximally symmetric space.Comment: 39 pages; minor change

The common p.R114W <i>HNF4A </i>mutation causes a distinct clinical subtype of monogenic diabetes

HNF4A mutations cause increased birth weight, transient neonatal hypoglycaemia and maturity onset diabetes of the young (MODY). The most frequently reported HNF4A mutation is p.R114W (previously p.R127W) but functional studies have shown inconsistent results, there is lack of co-segregation in some pedigrees and an unexpectedly high frequency in public variant databases. We confirm that p.R114W is a pathogenic mutation with an odds ratio of 30.4 (95% CI: 9.79 - 125, P=2x10(-21)) for diabetes in our MODY cohort compared to controls. p.R114W heterozygotes do not have the increased birth weight of patients with other HNF4A mutations (3476g vs. 4147g, P=0.0004) and fewer patients responded to sulfonylurea treatment (48% vs. 73%, P=0.038). p.R114W has reduced penetrance; only 54% of heterozygotes developed diabetes by age 30 compared to 71% for other HNF4A mutations. We re-define p.R114W as a pathogenic mutation causing a distinct clinical subtype of HNF4A MODY with reduced penetrance, reduced sensitivity to sulfonylurea treatment and no effect on birth weight. This has implications for diabetes treatment, management of pregnancy and predictive testing of at-risk relatives. The increasing availability of large-scale sequence data is likely to reveal similar examples of rare, low-penetrance MODY mutations.</p

Global Symmetries and D-Terms in Supersymmetric Field Theories

We study the role of D-terms in supersymmetry (SUSY) breaking. By carefully analyzing the SUSY multiplets containing various conserved currents in theories with global symmetries, we obtain a number of constraints on the renormalization group flow in supersymmetric field theories. Under broad assumptions, these results imply that there are no SUSY-breaking vacua, not even metastable ones, with parametrically large D-terms. This explains the absence of such D-terms in models of dynamical SUSY-breaking. There is, however, a rich class of calculable models which generate comparable D-terms and F-terms through a variety of non-perturbative effects; these D-terms can be non-abelian. We give several explicit examples of such models, one of which is a new calculable limit of the 3-2 model.Comment: 34 pages, 2 figures; reference added, minor change

Small Worlds and Semantic Network Growth in Typical and Late Talkers

Network analysis has demonstrated that systems ranging from social networks to electric power grids often involve a small world structure-with local clustering but global ac cess. Critically, small world structure has also been shown to characterize adult human semantic networks. Moreover, the connectivity pattern of these mature networks is consistent with lexical growth processes in which children add new words to their vocabulary based on the structure of the language-learning environment. However, thus far, there is no direct evidence that a child's individual semantic network structure is associated with their early language learning. Here we show that, while typically developing children's early networks show small world structure as early as 15 months and with as few as 55 words, children with language delay (late talkers) have this structure to a smaller degree. This implicates a maladaptive bias in word acquisition for late talkers, potentially indicating a preference for “oddball” words. The findings provide the first evidence of a link between small-world connectivity and lexical development in individual children