Pathological features and prognostic significance of prostate cancer in the apical section determined by whole mount histology

PURPOSE: We test the hypothesis that cancer in the apical section of the prostate is an important independent factor in predicting the progression of clinically localized prostate cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We analyzed clinical data and whole mount histological step sections for 500 patients who had undergone radical retropubic prostatectomy for clinically localized prostate cancer. RESULTS: Cancer was in the apex of the prostate in 175 patients (35%). These patients had a larger cancer and higher incidence of positive surgical margins, and were more likely to have a poorly differentiated cancer than the 325 patients without cancer in the apex. However, the presence of apical cancer was not a significant predictor of clinical or prostate specific antigen progression in either univariate or multivariate Cox proportional hazards models when analyzed for the entire group or only in patients with tumor confined to the prostate. CONCLUSIONS: Apical cancer in a radical prostatectomy specimen is simply a sign of a larger volume cancer and is not independently associated with an increased risk of clinical or prostate specific antigen progression.     

Stress Driven Discovery of Natural Products From Actinobacteria with Anti-Oxidant and Cytotoxic Activities Including Docking and ADMET Properties

Elicitation through abiotic stress, including chemical elicitors like heavy metals, is a new technique for drug discovery. In this research, the effect of heavy metals on actinobacteria Streptomyces sp. SH-1312 for secondary metabolite production, with strong pharmacological activity, along with pharmacokinetics profile, was firstly investigated. The optimum metal stress conditions consisted of actinobacteria strain Streptomyces sp. SH-1312 with addition of mix metals (Co²⁺ + Zn²⁺) ions at 0.5 mM in Gause’s medium. Under these conditions, the stress metabolite anhydromevalonolactone (MVL) was produced, which was absent in the normal culture of strain and other metals combinations. Furthermore, the stress metabolite was also evaluated for its anti-oxidant and cytotoxic activities. The compound exhibited remarkable anti-oxidant activities, recording the IC₅₀ value of 19.65 ± 5.7 µg/mL in DPPH, IC₅₀ of 15.49 ± 4.8 against NO free radicals, the IC₅₀ value of 19.65 ± 5.22 µg/mL against scavenging ability, and IC₅₀ value of 19.38 ± 7.11 µg/mL for iron chelation capacity and the cytotoxic activities against PC3 cell lines were recorded with IC₅₀ values of 35.81 ± 4.2 µg/mL after 24 h, 23.29 ± 3.8 µg/mL at 48 h, and 16.25 ± 6.5 µg/mL after 72 h. Further mechanistic studies have revealed that the compound MVL has shown its pharmacological efficacy by upregulation of P53 and BAX while downregulation of BCL-2 expression, indicating that MVL is following apoptosis in varying degrees. To better understand the pharmacological properties of MVL, in this work, the absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (ADMET) were also evaluated. During ADMET predictions, MVL has displayed a safer profile in case of hepatotoxicity, cytochrome inhibition and also displayed as non-cardiotoxic. The compound MVL showed good binding energy in the molecular docking studies, and the results revealed that MVL bind in the active region of the target protein of P53 and BAX. This work triumphantly announced a prodigious effect of heavy metals on actinobacteria with fringe benefits as a key tool of MVL production with a strong pharmacological and pharmacokinetic profile.     

Electrochemical performance of controlled porosity resorcinol/formaldehyde based carbons as electrode materials for supercapacitor applications

Controlled porosity carbons aerogels were synthesized by sol–gel polycondensation of resorcinol (R) and formaldehyde (F) using sodium-carbonate as the catalyst (C). The Effect of variation of R/C ratio and carbonization temperature on the porous structure of resultant gels and carbons was investigated by characterizing the porous structure of the materials using nitrogen adsorption–desorption measurements at 77 K. It was shown that carbons with surface areas ranging between 537 and 687 m² g^?1 and average pore size in the range of 1.80–4.62 nm can be produced when controlling the resorcinol to catalyst (R/C) molar ratio between 100 and 500 and carbonization temperature in the range of 800–1000 °C.The resultant polymeric carbons were used as the electroactive material for the fabrication of electrodes for electrochemical cells. Contact angle measurements were performed to study the wettability of the electrodes using 6 M KOH as the probing liquid. The contact angles were in the range of 106°–125° indicating the carbon based electrodes are hydrophobic in nature and no significant change in contact angles was observed with the change in R/C ratio.XRD patterns of the carbon electrodes show a typical broad peak at 2θ of about 23 indicating a disordered structure corresponding to the amorphous nature of the materials as expected for polymeric based hard carbons with crosslinked structure. These results are in line with Raman spectra of carbons which indicate two peaks in 1590 cm^?1 and 1340 cm^?1 wavenumber.The electrochemical performance of the electrodes was investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) measurements. The CV results showed that high specific capacitance of 136 Fg^?1 can be achieved for the carbon with average pore diameter of 1.80 nm at a scan rate of 5 mV s^?1 when using 6M KOH as the electrolyte. Electrochemical impedance (EIS) measurements also revealed that the capacitance of the cell deteriorates with increase in pore size of the carbon probably due to pore flooding by the electrolyte. The results of this study show the applicability of these carbons as potential electrode materials for supercapacitor applications.     

Natural vs. Synthetic Phosphate as Efficient Heterogeneous Compounds for Synthesis of Quinoxalines

Natural phosphate (NP) and synthetic fluorapatite phosphate (SFAP) were proposed as stable, inexpensive, readily available and recyclable catalysts for the condensation of 1,2-diamines with 1,2-dicarbonyls in methanol to afford quinoxaline at room temperature. NP provided as high as 92–99% yield for quinoxalines in short reaction times (i.e., 1–45 min), while SFAP created quinoxalines with 87–97% yield in 60–120 min. From the chemical analyses, X-ray fluoresecency, X-ray diffraction, energy dispersive X-ray and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy methods, two main phases (CaO, P₂O₅) appeared in NP together with other low content phases (SiO₂, Fe₂O₃). Compared to other phases, apatite (CaO and P₂O₅ as Ca10(PO₄)₆) played a major role in the catalytic activity of NP. SFAP with similar Ca/P atomic ratio showed a relatively lower catalytic activity than NP for the condensation of 1,2-diamine with 1,2-dicarbonyl in methanol at ambient temperature. To investigate the recyclability of catalysts, the surface properties of NP and 6-recycled NP were investigated using scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller and Barrett–Joyner–Halenda methods. Some differences were observed in NP and 6-recycled NP’s particle size, surface area, the volume and size of pores, and the content of elements; nevertheless, the use–reuse process did not noticeably change the catalytic property of NP.     

Optimisation of food grade mixed surfactant‐based l‐ascorbic acid nanoemulsions using response surface methodology

Co‐surfactant free l‐ascorbic acid (LAA) nanoemulsions were prepared using mixed surfactants (Soya lecithin and Tween 80). Response surface methodology (RSM) was used to optimise the emulsifying conditions for LAA nanoemulsions. The effects of water proportion (6%–14% w/w), homogenisation pressure (80–160 MPa), surfactant concentrations (4%–12% w/w) and laa concentration (0.5–1.3 w/w) on responses (size of droplets and nanoemulsion stability) were investigated. RSM results showed that the values of responses can be successfully predicted through second‐order polynomial model. The coefficients of determinations for droplet size and nanoemulsion stability were 0.9375 and 0.9027, respectively. The optimum preparation conditions for l‐LAA nanoemulsion were 9.04% water proportion, 114.48 MPa homogenisation pressure, 7.36% surfactant concentration and 1.09% LAA concentration. At the end of one month storage study, the retention of LAA in optimised nanoemulsions stored at 4°C and 25°C were 74.4% and 66.7%, respectively. These results may provide valuable contributions for food and pharmaceutical industry to develop delivery system for food additives and nutraceutical components.     

An efficient numerical technique based on the extended cubic B-spline functions for solving time fractional Black–Scholes model

Financial theory could introduce a fractional differential equation (FDE) that presents new theoretical research concepts, methods and practical implementations. Due to the memory factor of fractional derivatives, physical pathways with storage and inherited properties can be best represented by FDEs. For that purpose, reliable and effective techniques are required for solving FDEs. Our objective is to generalize the collocation method for solving time fractional Black–Scholes European option pricing model using the extended cubic B-spline. The key feature of the strategy is that it turns these type of problems into a system of algebraic equations which can be appropriate for computer programming. This is not only streamlines the problems but speed up the computations as well. The Fourier stability and convergence analysis of the scheme are examined. A proposed numerical scheme having second-order accuracy via spatial direction is also constructed. The numerical and graphical results indicate that the suggested approach for the European option prices agree well with the analytical solutions.

     

Can end-user feedback in social media be trusted for software evolution: Exploring and analyzing fake reviews

End-user feedback in social media platforms, particularly in the app stores, is increasing exponentially with each passing day. Software researchers and vendors started to mine end-user feedback by proposing text analytics methods and tools to extract useful information for software evolution and maintenance. In addition, research shows that positive feedback and high-star app ratings attract more users and increase downloads. However, it emerged in the fake review market, where software vendors started incorporating fake reviews against their corresponding applications to improve overall software ratings. For this purpose, we conducted an exploratory study to understand how end-users register and write fake reviews in the Google Play Store. We curated a research data set containing 68,000 end-user comments from the Google Play Store and a fake review generator, that is, the Testimonial generator (TG). Its purpose is to understand fake reviews on these platforms and identify the common patterns potential end-users and professionals use to report fake reviews by critically analyzing the end-user feedback. We conducted a detailed survey at the University of Science and Technology Bannu, Pakistan, to identify the intelligence and accuracy of crowd-users in manually identifying fake reviews. In addition, we developed a ground truth to be compared with the results obtained from the automated machine and deep learning (M&DL) classifier experiment. In the survey, 512 end-users participated and recorded their responses in identifying fake reviews. Finally, various M&DL classifiers are employed to classify and identify end-user reviews into real and fake to automate the process. Unlike humans, the M&DL classifiers performed well in automatically classifying reviews into real and fake by obtaining much higher accuracy, precision, recall, and f-measures. The accuracy of manually identifying fake reviews by the crowd-users is 44.4%. In contrast, the M&DL classifiers obtained an average accuracy of 96%. The experimental results obtained with various M&DL classifiers are encouraging. It is the first step towards identifying fake reviews in the app store by studying its implications in software and requirements engineering.     

Simulation of fourth-grade magnetized fluid flow due to motile cilia in a heated curved channel

This research aims to investigate the main features of the ciliary flow of fourth-grade fluid in a curved channel. The fluid is considered electrically conducting with a radial magnetic field effect. The constitutive relation for energy is formulated with the addition of viscous dissipation and thermal radiation. The governing system of coupled partial differential equations with extremely nonlinear expressions is simplified using the long wavelength and low Reynolds number approximations. The numerical outcomes of simplified normalized equations are obtained using the finite difference method incorporating the relaxation algorithm. The numerical outcomes regarding the influences of several physical parameters on the temperature, velocity, pumping characteristics, and stream function are examined through graphs. The outcomes reveal that fluid velocity diminishes by enhancing the magnetic parameter. Also, the temperature is enhanced by enhancing the values of the Brickman number. The current model has been used in bioengineering processes, microfluidics, and drug delivery systems.