Stability studies of pure and mixture form of curcuminoids by reverse phase-HPLC method under various experimental stress conditions

Since time immemorial, turmeric has been widely marketed and consumed as dietary supplement due to its diverse medicinal properties. Curcuminoids—comprising a mixture of curcumin (CUR), demethoxycurcumin (DMC), and bisdemethoxycurcumin (BDMC)—are the prime bioactive constituents of turmeric. However, the usage of curcuminoids is limited by their chemical instability. The lack of information on comparative stability profiles of curcuminoids (in pure and mixture form) prompted us to study how pure curcuminoids and their mixtures behave under different stress degradation conditions. The order of stability of curcuminoids when exposed to acidic, alkaline, and oxidative degradation was found to be as follows: BDMC > DMC > CUR. While the pure and mixture forms of curcuminoids were stable against heat, they completely degraded upon exposure to sunlight. The degradation extent of curcuminoids (in mixture form) was substantially less as compared to their pure form; therefore, this suggested the synergistic stabilizing influence of DMC and BDMC in the curcuminoids’ mixture.     

TraceAnalyzer: a system for processing performance traces

The performance of a program often varies significantly over the course of the program's run. Thus, to understand the performance of a program it is valuable to look not just at end‐to‐end metrics (e.g. total number of cache misses) but also the time‐varying performance of the program. Unfortunately, analyzing time‐varying performance is both cumbersome and difficult. This paper makes three contributions, all geared toward helping others in working with traces. First, it describes a system, the TraceAnalyzer, designed specifically for working with performance traces; a performance trace captures the time‐varying performance of a program run. Second, it describes lessons that we have learned from many years of working with these traces. Finally, it uses a case study to demonstrate how we have used the TraceAnalyzer to understand a performance anomaly. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evaluation of internal defect and surface color of whole pickles using hyperspectral imaging

Hyperspectral imaging operated under simultaneous reflectance (400–675 nm) and transmittance (675–1000 nm) modes was studied for non-destructive and non-contact sensing of surface color and bloater damage in whole pickles. Good and defective pickles were collected from a commercial pickle processing plant. Hyperspectral images of these pickles were obtained using a prototype of on-line hyperspectral imaging system, operating in the wavelength range of 400–1000 nm. Principal component analysis was applied to the hyperspectral images of the pickle samples for bloater damage detection. Color of the pickles was modeled using tristimulus values calculated based on the hyperspectral images. There were no differences in chroma and hue angle of good and defective pickles. The average chroma of good and defective pickles was 15.5 and 15.0, respectively, and the hue angle 94.0° and 93.8°, respectively. Transmittance images at 675–1000 nm were much more effective for internal defect detection compared to reflectance images for the visible region of 500–675 nm. An overall defect classification accuracy of 86% was achieved, compared with an accuracy of 70% by the human inspectors. With further improvement, the hyperspectral imaging system could meet the need of bloated pickles detection in a commercial plant setting.     

Differential prevalence of cigarette smoking in patients with schizophrenic vs mood disorders

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive metabolic intermediates generated from various chemical carcinogens are known to play an important role in cell damage and in the initiation and progression of carcinogenesis. Many radical scavengers, interestingly naturally occuring antioxidants have been found to be effective in inhibiting the induction of carcinogenesis by a wide variety of chemical carcinogens. Studies have also indicated that various spice principles form an important group as antioxidants. In the present study our goal was to investigate whether piperine an pungent principle of black and long peppers was able to inhibit or reduce the oxidative changes induced by chemical carcinogens in rat intestinal model. Carcinogenesis was initiated in intestinal lumen of male rats with 7,12,dimethyl benzanthracene, dimethyl amino-methyl azobenzene and 3-methyl cholenthrene. Oxidative alterations were assessed by determining thiobarbituric reactive substances, mainly malonaldehyde (as a measure of lipid peroxidation), thiol status and expression of gamma-GT and Na+-K+-ATPase activity in intestinal mucosa. Data indicated that carcinogens treatment induced GSH depletion with substantial increase in thiobarbituric reactive substances and enzyme activities. Piperine treatment with carcinogens resulted in inhibition of thiobarbituric reactive substances. It mediated a significant increase in the GSH levels and restoration in gamma-GT and Na+-K+-ATPase activity. The studies thus indicate a protective role of piperine against the oxidative alterations by carcinogens. It may be suggested that piperine modulates the oxidative changes by inhibiting lipid peroxidation and mediating enhanced synthesis or transport of GSH thereby replenishing thiol redox.     

Deficient expression of mRNA for the putative inductive factor bone morphogenetic protein-7 in chemically initiated rat nephroblastomas

During 1996, representatives from two professional organizations--American School Health Association and National Association of School Nurses--met collaboratively to identify and rank order key questions regarding contemporary research needs in school nursing services. This article summarizes existing literature and proposes areas for research. Recommendations are offered for nurses, school health program administrators, educators of school nurses, professional organizations, and others who plan and provide health care for school-aged youth.     

Correction: Meta-heuristic endured deep learning model for big data classification: image analytics

Knowledge and Information Systems -     

A multi-class skin Cancer classification using deep convolutional neural networks

Skin Cancer accounts for one-third of all diagnosed cancers worldwide. The prevalence of skin cancers have been rising over the past decades. In recent years, use of dermoscopy has enhanced the diagnostic capability of skin cancer. The accurate diagnosis of skin cancer is challenging for dermatologists as multiple skin cancer types may appear similar in appearance. The dermatologists have an average accuracy of 62% to 80% in skin cancer diagnosis. The research community has been made significant progress in developing automated tools to assist dermatologists in decision making. In this work, we propose an automated computer-aided diagnosis system for multi-class skin (MCS) cancer classification with an exceptionally high accuracy. The proposed method outperformed both expert dermatologists and contemporary deep learning methods for MCS cancer classification. We performed fine-tuning over seven classes of HAM10000 dataset and conducted a comparative study to analyse the performance of five pre-trained convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and four ensemble models. The maximum accuracy of 93.20% for individual model amongst the set of models whereas maximum accuracy of 92.83% for ensemble model is reported in this paper. We propose use of ResNeXt101 for the MCS cancer classification owing to its optimized architecture and ability to gain higher accuracy.

     

Measuring the cost of storage management

We study the cost of storage management for garbage-collected programs compiled with the Standard ML of New Jersey compiler. We show that the cost of storage management is not the same as the time spent garbage collecting. For many of the programs, the time spent garbage collecting is less than the time spent doing other storage-management tasks.This research was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, DoD, through ARPA Order 8313, and monitored by ESD/AVS under contract F19628-91-C-0168. Views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or the United States Government. David Tarditi was also supported by an AT&T PhD Scholarship. Amer Diwan was also supported by National Science Foundation Grant CCR-9211272.     

Heterogeneity in Klippel-Feil syndrome: a new classification

BACKGROUND: Klippel-Feil syndrome (KFS) is characterised by congenital vertebral fusion of the cervical spine and a wide spectrum of associated anomalies. KFS has often been considered a sporadic syndrome. However, since the publication of the original KFS classification early this century, a number of KFS families have indicated heterogeneity complicated by a broad range of variable expression. OBJECTIVE: The two major objectives of this study were (1) to identify differences and similarities in the postnatal appearance, morphology, position and inheritance of vertebral fusions within and between KFS families and (2) to establish a new KFS classification focussed on KFS aetiology. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Vertebral fusions were assessed via spinal radiography. Chromosomal karyotypes were performed using routine cytogenetics. RESULTS: The medical histories of three KFS families are presented. The postnatal time, position and appearance of vertebral fusions, associated anomalies and mode of inheritance were different for the three KFS families. Four classes of KFS are described in a comprehensive classification table that allays much of the uncertainty arising from KFS heterogeneity and variable expression. CONCLUSION: We have described four different KFS classes (KF1-4) within a comprehensive classification that addresses KFS genetic heterogeneity. The position of vertebral fusions in the cervical spine and their incidence within affected families are delineating features of KFS.