Extraction and characterization of radish seed oils using different methods

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of three different extraction methods on oil yield, physicochemical properties and bioactive ingredients of radish seeds.Methods: Radish seed oil was prepared by traditional solvent extraction (SE), supercritical carbon dioxide extraction (SCE) and sub-critical propane extraction (SPE). The yield, physicochemical properties, fatty acid composition and oxidative stability of the oil extracts were compared. The contents of tocopherol and sulforaphene in the oils were also determined.Results: The oil yield obtained by SPE, SE, SCE were 33.69, 27.17 and 24.10 %, respectively. There were no significant differences in physicochemical properties and fatty acid composition of oils extracted by the three methods. However, SCE oil had the best oxidative stability, and highest contents of vitamin E and sulforaphene, followed by oils from SPE and SEConclusion: SCE is highly selective for tocopherol and sulforaphene, which could explain its high oil oxidative stability. These results suggest that of the three extraction methods, SCE is best suited for preparing medicinal radish seed oil.Keywords: Radish seed oil, Different extraction methods, Fatty acid composition, Tocopherol, Sulforaphen

Extraction and characterization of Raphanus Sativus seed oil obtained by different methods

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of three different extraction methods on yield, physicochemical properties and bioactive ingredients of Raphanus sativus seed oil.Methods: Raphanus sativus seed oil was prepared by traditional solvent extraction (SE), super-critical carbon dioxide extraction (SCE) and sub-critical propane  extraction (SPE). The yield, physicochemical properties, fatty acid composition and oxidative stability of the oil extracts were compared. The contents of tocopherol and sulforaphene in the oils were also determined.Results: The oil yield obtained by SPE, SE and SCE were 33.69, 27.17 and 24.10 %, respectively. There were no significant differences in physicochemical properties and fatty acid compositions of oils extracted by the three methods. However, SCE oil had the best oxidative stability, and highest contents of vitamin E and sulforaphene, followed by oils from SPE and SE.Conclusion: SCE is highly selective for tocopherol and sulforaphene, which could explain its high oil oxidative stability. These results suggest that of the three extraction methods, SCE is best suited for preparing medicinal radish seed oil.Keywords: Raphanus sativus seed oil, Different extraction methods, Fatty acid composition, Tocopherol, Sulforaphen

Physicochemical Characterization of Inclusion Complex of Catechin and Glucosyl-β-Cyclodextrin

Purpose: To investigate the suitability of glucosyl-β-cyclodextrin (G-β-CD) to form inclusion complex with catechin, and characterize the physicochemical properties of the inclusion complex of catechin and G-β-CD.Methods: Catechin and G-β-CD was mixed in water at the same molar ratio, stirred at 20 °C for 48 h and lyophilized to obtain the complex. Its physicochemical properties were investigated by ultravioletvisible spectrometry (UV), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC).Results: The characteristic UV absorption peaks for catechin, the physical mixture and the complex occurred at 279 nm. There was no significant difference between the IR spectra of the physical mixture and the complex. SEM and XRD data indicate that catechin was molecularly distributed in G-β-CD matrix and lost its crystallinity in the process. DSC indicate that the heat stability of catechin was significantly improved by complexing with G-β-CD.Conclusion: Catechin can efficiently interact with G-β-CD to form a complex by freeze-drying method. The complex of catechin and G-β-CD resulted in the changes in some of the characteristic spectral and thermal properties of the former. Furthermore, the heat stability of catechin is significantly improved.Keywords: Catechin, Glucosyl-β-cyclodextrin, Complex, Physicochemical propert

Co-Check: Collaborative Outsourced Data Auditing in Multicloud Environment

With the increasing demand for ubiquitous connectivity, wireless technology has significantly improved our daily lives. Meanwhile, together with cloud-computing technology (e.g., cloud storage services and big data processing), new wireless networking technology becomes the foundation infrastructure of emerging communication networks. Particularly, cloud storage has been widely used in services, such as data outsourcing and resource sharing, among the heterogeneous wireless environments because of its convenience, low cost, and flexibility. However, users/clients lose the physical control of their data after outsourcing. Consequently, ensuring the integrity of the outsourced data becomes an important security requirement of cloud storage applications. In this paper, we present Co-Check, a collaborative multicloud data integrity audition scheme, which is based on BLS (Boneh-Lynn-Shacham) signature and homomorphic tags. According to the proposed scheme, clients can audit their outsourced data in a one-round challenge-response interaction with low performance overhead. Our scheme also supports dynamic data maintenance. The theoretical analysis and experiment results illustrate that our scheme is provably secure and efficient

Ndrg2 regulates vertebral specification in differentiating somites

AbstractIt is generally thought that vertebral patterning and identity are globally determined prior to somite formation. Relatively little is known about the regulators of vertebral specification after somite segmentation. Here, we demonstrated that Ndrg2, a tumor suppressor gene, was dynamically expressed in the presomitic mesoderm (PSM) and at early stage of differentiating somites. Loss of Ndrg2 in mice resulted in vertebral homeotic transformations in thoracic/lumbar and lumbar/sacral transitional regions in a dose-dependent manner. Interestingly, the inactivation of Ndrg2 in osteoblasts or chondrocytes caused defects resembling those observed in Ndrg2−/− mice, with a lower penetrance. In addition, forced overexpression of Ndrg2 in osteoblasts or chondrocytes also conferred vertebral defects, which were distinct from those in Ndrg2−/− mice. These genetic analyses revealed that Ndrg2 modulates vertebral identity in segmented somites rather than in the PSM. At the molecular level, combinatory alterations of the amount of Hoxc8-11 gene transcripts were detected in the differentiating somites of Ndrg2−/− embryos, which may partially account for the vertebral defects in Ndrg2 mutants. Nevertheless, Bmp/Smad signaling activity was elevated in the differentiating somites of Ndrg2−/− embryos. Collectively, our findings unveiled Ndrg2 as a novel regulator of vertebral specification in differentiating somites

Auditory Feedback Control of Vocal Pitch during Sustained Vocalization: A Cross-Sectional Study of Adult Aging

Background: Auditory feedback has been demonstrated to play an important role in the control of voice fundamental frequency (F0), but the mechanisms underlying the processing of auditory feedback remain poorly understood. It has been well documented that young adults can use auditory feedback to stabilize their voice F0 by making compensatory responses to perturbations they hear in their vocal pitch feedback. However, little is known about the effects of aging on the processing of audio-vocal feedback during vocalization. Methodology/Principal Findings: In the present study, we recruited adults who were between 19 and 75 years of age and divided them into five age groups. Using a pitch-shift paradigm, the pitch of their vocal feedback was unexpectedly shifted 650 or 6100 cents during sustained vocalization of the vowel sound/u/. Compensatory vocal F0 response magnitudes and latencies to pitch feedback perturbations were examined. A significant effect of age was found such that response magnitudes increased with increasing age until maximal values were reached for adults 51–60 years of age and then decreased for adults 61–75 years of age. Adults 51–60 years of age were also more sensitive to the direction and magnitude of the pitch feedback perturbations compared to younger adults. Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that the pitch-shift reflex systematically changes across the adult lifespan. Understanding aging-related changes to the role of auditory feedback is critically important for our theoretica

Effect of High-Pressure Treatment on Catalytic and Physicochemical Properties of Pepsin

For a long time, high-pressure treatment has been used to destroy the compact structures of natural proteins in order to promote subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis. However, there are few reports evaluating the feasibility of directly improving the catalytic capability of proteases by using high-pressure treatments. In this study, the effects of high-pressure treatment on the catalytic capacity and structure of pepsin were investigated, and the relationship between its catalytic properties and changes in its physicochemical properties was explored. It was found that high-pressure treatment could lead to changes of the sulfhydryl group/disulfide bond content, hydrophobicity, hydrodynamic radius, intrinsic viscosity, and subunit composition of pepsin, and the conformational change of pepsin resulted in improvement to its enzymatic activity and hydrolysis efficiency, which had an obvious relationship with the high-pressure treatment conditions

Primal-dual interior point QP-free algorithm for nonlinear constrained optimization

Abstract In this paper, a class of nonlinear constrained optimization problems with both inequality and equality constraints is discussed. Based on a simple and effective penalty parameter and the idea of primal-dual interior point methods, a QP-free algorithm for solving the discussed problems is presented. At each iteration, the algorithm needs to solve two or three reduced systems of linear equations with a common coefficient matrix, where a slightly new working set technique for judging the active set is used to construct the coefficient matrix, and the positive definiteness restriction on the Lagrangian Hessian estimate is relaxed. Under reasonable conditions, the proposed algorithm is globally and superlinearly convergent. During the numerical experiments, by modifying the technique in Section 5 of (SIAM J. Optim. 14(1): 173-199, 2003), we introduce a slightly new computation measure for the Lagrangian Hessian estimate based on second order derivative information, which can satisfy the associated assumptions. Then, the proposed algorithm is tested and compared on 59 typical test problems, which shows that the proposed algorithm is promising

Antioxidant Activity and α-Glucosidase Inhibitory Activities of the Polycondensate of Catechin with Glyoxylic Acid.

In order to investigate polymeric flavonoids, the polycondensate of catechin with glyoxylic acid (PCG) was prepared and its chemically antioxidant, cellular antioxidant (CAA) and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities were evaluated. The DPPH and ABTS radical scavenging activities and antiproliferative effect of PCG were lower than those of catechin, while PCG had higher CAA activity than catechin. In addition, PCG had very high α-glucosidase inhibitory activities (IC50 value, 2.59 μg/mL) in comparison to catechin (IC50 value, 239.27 μg/mL). Inhibition kinetics suggested that both PCG and catechin demonstrated a mixture of noncompetitive and anticompetitive inhibition. The enhanced CAA and α-glucosidase inhibitor activities of PCG could be due to catechin polymerization enhancing the binding capacity to the cellular membrane and enzymes