Diuretic Effects of Cleistanthin A and Cleistanthin B from the Leaves of Cleistanthus Collinus in Wistar Rats

To study the diuretic effects of cleistanthin A and cleistanthin B, phytoconstituents were isolated from the leaves of Cleistanthus collinus in Wistar rats. The in vivo diuretic effects of cleistanthins A and B were determined according to the Lipschitz test. Prior to the experiment, the animals were fasted for 5 h and placed individually in metabolic cages. Cleistanthins A and B (12.5, 25, and 50 mg/kg) and furosemide (5 mg/kg) were suspended in 0.5% w/v carboxymethyl cellulose and administered orally. The urine was collected up to 5 h after administration and subsequently up to 24 h after administration. The acidity and urine volume were measured immediately. The urinary sodium and potassium levels were determined using a flame photometer, and the chloride level was determined by argentometric titration. The diuretic index and diuretic activity were calculated mathematically. While cleistanthins A and B showed a diuretic index of more than one, the diuretic activity of these compounds was less than one, indicating inferior activity compared with furosemide. Both cleistanthin A and B produced a significant increase in the urine volume and alterations in urinary electrolyte levels. However, the effect of the compounds was not dose dependent. Cleistanthin A and cleistanthin B exert diuretic effects in male Wistar rats without affecting the urinary acidity

Research directions in data wrangling: Visualizations and transformations for usable and credible data

In spite of advances in technologies for working with data, analysts still spend an inordinate amount of time diagnosing data quality issues and manipulating data into a usable form. This process of ‘data wrangling’ often constitutes the most tedious and time-consuming aspect of analysis. Though data cleaning and integration arelongstanding issues in the database community, relatively little research has explored how interactive visualization can advance the state of the art. In this article, we review the challenges and opportunities associated with addressing data quality issues. We argue that analysts might more effectively wrangle data through new interactive systems that integrate data verification, transformation, and visualization. We identify a number of outstanding research questions, including how appropriate visual encodings can facilitate apprehension of missing data, discrepant values, and uncertainty; how interactive visualizations might facilitate data transform specification; and how recorded provenance and social interaction might enable wider reuse, verification, and modification of data transformations

Comparison Matrices of Semantic RESTful APIs Technologies

International audienceSemantic RESTful APIs combine the power of the REST architectural style, the Semantic Web and Linked Data. They picture a world in which Web APIs are easier to browse and more meaningful for humans while also being machine-interpretable, turning them into platforms that developers and companies can build on. We counted 36 technologies that target building such APIs. As there is no one-size-fits-all technology, they have to be combined. This makes selecting the appropriate set of technologies to a specific context a difficult task for architects and developers. So, how the selection of such a set of technologies can be eased? In this paper we propose three comparison matrices of Semantic RESTful APIs enabling technologies. It is based on the analysis of the differences and commonalities between existing technologies. It intends to help developers and architects in making an informed decision on the technologies to use. It also highlights the limitations of state-of-the-art technologies from which open challenges are derived