In vitro litholytic activity of some medicinal plants on urinary stones

Objective: This study was designed to evaluate the effect of plant extracts used in traditional medicine on the dissolution of three types of kidney stones.Subjects and methods: Kidney calculi of cystine; uric acid and pure carbapatite were incubated in vitro during 6 weeks in the presence of three of plant extracts and of 0.9% NaCl solution used as control. An extract of each plant was prepared by infusion of three grams of powdered plants during 30 min in 100 mL of a boiled NaCl 0.9% aqueous solution. Each extract was then filtered and thereafter set in a flask containing a stones. At the end of each week the stone was removed from the experimental medium and weighted after a 18 h drying at 40oC.Results: After 6 weeks of experiment and with in vitro study, we are observed that the aqueous extract of the seeds of Trigonella foenum-graecum has a better effect on dissolution of cystine and carbapatite stones (p < 0.05), with mass loss of 94 mg and 73 mg respectively at the end of experiment. While with NaCl solution, the mass was small.Conclusion: Our experiment failed to demonstrate a significant effect of the tested plant extracts to dissolve three types stones in vitro. However, we observed that only the extract of the seeds of T. foenum-graecum has a better effect on dissolution of cystine and carbapatite stones probably resulting from formation of complexes between stones and polyphenols or flavonoids present in the extracts

6-Formyl-2-meth­oxy-3-nitro­phenyl 4-toluene­sulfonate

In the title compound, C15H13NO7S, the inter­planar angle between the two aromatic rings is 26.04 (3)°. The crystal structure is stabilized by C—H⋯O interactions

Is Japan Really Back? The "Abe Doctrine" and Global Governance

Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has emerged as the “comeback kid” of Japanese politics and in his second term of office is now widely regarded as a rare example of strong leadership as he seeks to arrest and reverse his country’s perceived decline. The strategy to achieve these objectives has come to be known as the “Abe Doctrine,” which represents a radical but risky shift in foreign policy. This article outlines the tenets of the evolving Abe Doctrine and then applies them to the Abe administration’s behaviour in the mechanisms of global governance, a highly pertinent but overlooked example. It argues that although a more strategic and coherent approach to global governance has emerged under Abe than had been previously evident, this has been at the expense of the norm of internationalism that has traditionally shaped Japan’s role

Association Between Serum Uric Acid and Development of Type 2 Diabetes

OBJECTIVE To systematically evaluate the association between serum uric acid (SUA) level and subsequent development of type 2 diabetes.RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We searched Medline (31 March from 1966 to 2009) and Embase (31 March from 1980 to 2009) for observational cohort studies examining the association between SUA and the risk of type 2 diabetes by manual literature search. Relative risks (RRs) for each 1 mg/dl increase in SUA were pooled by using a random-effects model. The studies included were stratified into subgroups representing different study characteristics, and meta-regression analyses were performed to investigate the effect of these characteristics on the association between SUA level and type 2 diabetes risk.RESULTS The search yielded 11 cohort studies (42,834 participants) that reported 3,305 incident cases of type 2 diabetes during follow-up periods ranging from 2.0 to 13.5 years. The pooled RR of a 1 mg/dl increase in SUA was 1.17 (95% CI 1.09–1.25). Study results were consistently significant (i.e., >1) across characteristics of participants and study design. Publication bias was both visually and statistically suggested (P = 0.03 for Egger\u27s test, 0.06). Adjustment for publication bias attenuated the pooled RR per mg/dl increase in SUA (RR 1.11 [95% CI 1.03–1.20]), but the association remained statistically significant (P = 0.009).CONCLUSIONS The current meta-analysis suggests that SUA level is positively associated with the development of type 2 diabetes regardless of various study characteristics. Further research should attempt to determine whether it is effective to utilize SUA level as a predictor of type 2 diabetes for its primary prevention

Organism-sediment interactions govern post-hypoxia recovery of ecosystem functioning

Hypoxia represents one of the major causes of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning loss for coastal waters. Since eutrophication-induced hypoxic events are becoming increasingly frequent and intense, understanding the response of ecosystems to hypoxia is of primary importance to understand and predict the stability of ecosystem functioning. Such ecological stability may greatly depend on the recovery patterns of communities and the return time of the system properties associated to these patterns. Here, we have examined how the reassembly of a benthic community contributed to the recovery of ecosystem functioning following experimentally-induced hypoxia in a tidal flat. We demonstrate that organism-sediment interactions that depend on organism size and relate to mobility traits and sediment reworking capacities are generally more important than recovering species richness to set the return time of the measured sediment processes and properties. Specifically, increasing macrofauna bioturbation potential during community reassembly significantly contributed to the recovery of sediment processes and properties such as denitrification, bedload sediment transport, primary production and deep pore water ammonium concentration. Such bioturbation potential was due to the replacement of the small-sized organisms that recolonised at early stages by large-sized bioturbating organisms, which had a disproportionately stronger influence on sediment. This study suggests that the complete recovery of organism-sediment interactions is a necessary condition for ecosystem functioning recovery, and that such process requires long periods after disturbance due to the slow growth of juveniles into adult stages involved in these interactions. Consequently, repeated episodes of disturbance at intervals smaller than the time needed for the system to fully recover organism-sediment interactions may greatly impair the resilience of ecosystem functioning.

Functional redundancy and sensitivity of fish assemblages in European rivers, lakes and estuarine ecosystems

The impact of species loss on ecosystems functioning depends on the amount of trait similarity between species, i.e. functional redundancy, but it is also influenced by the order in which species are lost. Here we investigated redundancy and sensitivity patterns across fish assemblages in lakes, rivers and estuaries. Several scenarios of species extinction were simulated to determine whether the loss of vulnerable species (with high propensity of extinction when facing threats) causes a greater functional alteration than random extinction. Our results indicate that the functional redundancy tended to increase with species richness in lakes and rivers, but not in estuaries. We demonstrated that i) in the three systems, some combinations of functional traits are supported by non-redundant species, ii) rare species in rivers and estuaries support singular functions not shared by dominant species, iii) the loss of vulnerable species can induce greater functional alteration in rivers than in lakes and estuaries. Overall, the functional structure of fish assemblages in rivers is weakly buffered against species extinction because vulnerable species support singular functions. More specifically, a hotspot of functional sensitivity was highlighted in the Iberian Peninsula, which emphasizes the usefulness of quantitative criteria to determine conservation prioritiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Intraspecific traits change biodiversity effects on ecosystem functioning under metal stress

The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00442-011-1930-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.Studies investigating the impacts of biodiversity loss on ecosystem processes have often reached different conclusions, probably because insufficient attention has been paid to some aspects including (1) which biodiversity measure (e.g., species number, species identity or trait) better explains ecosystem functioning, (2) the mechanisms underpinning biodiversity effects, and (3) how can environmental context modulates biodiversity effects. Here, we investigated how species number (one to three species) and traits of aquatic fungal decomposers (by replacement of a functional type from an unpolluted site by another from a metal-polluted site) affect fungal production (biomass acumulation) and plant litter decomposition in the presence and absence of metal stress. To examine the putative mechanisms that explain biodiversity effects, we determined the contribution of each fungal species to the total biomass produced in multicultures by real-time PCR. In the absence of metal, positive diversity effects were observed for fungal production and leaf decomposition as a result of species complementarity. Metal stress decreased diversity effects on leaf decomposition in assemblages containing the functional type from the unpolluted site, probably due to competitive interactions between fungi. However, dominance effect maintained positive diversity effects under metal stress in assemblages containing the functional type from the metal-polluted site. These findings emphasize the importance of intraspecific diversity in modulating diversity effects under metal stress, providing evidence that trait-based diversity measures should be incorporated when examining biodiversity effects.The Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology supported I. Fernandes (SFRH/BD/42215/2007

Epitope Density Influences CD8+ Memory T Cell Differentiation

The generation of long-lived memory T cells is critical for successful vaccination but the factors controlling their differentiation are still poorly defined. We tested the hypothesis that the strength of T cell receptor (TCR) signaling contributed to memory CD8(+) T cell generation.We manipulated the density of antigenic epitope presented by dendritic cells to mouse naïve CD8(+) T cells, without varying TCR affinity. Our results show that a two-fold decrease in antigen dose selectively affects memory CD8(+) T cell generation without influencing T cell expansion and acquisition of effector functions. Moreover, we show that low antigen dose alters the duration of the interaction between T cells and dendritic cells and finely tunes the expression level of the transcription factors Eomes and Bcl6. Furthermore, we demonstrate that priming with higher epitope density results in a 2-fold decrease in the expression of Neuron-derived orphan nuclear receptor 1 (Nor-1) and this correlates with a lower level of conversion of Bcl-2 into a pro-apoptotic molecule and an increased number of memory T cells.Our results show that the amount of antigen encountered by naïve CD8(+) T cells following immunization with dendritic cells does not influence the generation of functional effector CD8(+) T cells but rather the number of CD8(+) memory T cells that persist in the host. Our data support a model where antigenic epitope density sensed by CD8(+) T cells at priming influences memory generation by modulating Bcl6, Eomes and Nor-1 expression