Curcumin containing monoolein aqueous dispersions: A preformulative study

The present study describes the production and characterization of monoolein aqueous dispersions (MAD) as drug delivery systems for curcumin (CR).MAD based on monoolein and different emulsifiers have been produced and characterized. Morphology and dimensional distribution have been investigated by Cryogenic Transmission Electron Microscopy (cryo-TEM), X-ray and Photon Correlation Spectroscopy (PCS).Monoolein in different mixtures with sodium cholate, sodium caseinate, bentonite and poloxamer resulted in heterogeneous dispersions constituted of unilamellar vesicles, cubosomes and sponge type phases, depending on the employed components, as found by cryo-TEM and X-ray studies. CR was encapsulated with entrapment efficiencies depending on the MAD composition, particularly the highest was reached in the case of monoolein/poloxamer/sodium cholate mixture. The same mixture was able to maintain CR stability also after 6 months.CR release modalities were in vitro investigated in order to mimic a possible subcutaneous administration of MAD. It was found that MAD constituted of monoolein/poloxamer and monoolein/poloxamer/sodium cholate mixtures were able to sustain CR release.MAD viscous vehicles were produced by xanthan gum.CR percutaneous absorption has been studied in vitro using excised human skin membranes [stratum corneum epidermis (SCE)] mounted into Franz cells. It was found that fluxes (F_n) of CR incorporated in MAD are influenced by the presence of monoolein based nanosystems. In particular xanthan gum based MAD better control CR diffusion from MAD.     

Exotic low-energy separation in 1D quantum liquids

We define the low-energy separation of the Hubbard chain in a magnetic field and chemical potential in terms of two c and s bosonic algebras. This generalizes the usual charge-spin separation, which is recovered in the limit of zero magnetization only. The corresponding pseudoparticle bosonization follows directly from the perturbative character of the pseudoparticle operator basis.     

Bag of soft biometrics for person identification

In this work we seek to provide insight on the general topic of soft biometrics. We firstly present a new refined definition of soft biometrics, emphasizing on the aspect of human compliance, and then proceed to identify candidate traits that accept this novel definition. We then address relations between traits and discuss associated benefits and limitations of these traits. We also consider two novel soft biometric traits, namely weight and color of clothes and we analyze their reliability. Related promising results on the performance are provided. Finally, we consider a new application, namely human identification solely carried out by a bag of facial, body and accessory soft biometric traits, and as an evidence of its practicality, we provide preliminary promising results.     

The Interactome between Metabolism and Gene Mutations in Myeloid Malignancies

The study of metabolic deregulation in myeloid malignancies has led to the investigation of metabolic-targeted therapies considering that cells undergoing leukemic transformation have excessive energy demands for growth and proliferation. However, the most difficult challenge in agents targeting metabolism is to determine a window of therapeutic opportunities between normal and neoplastic cells, considering that all or most of the metabolic pathways important for cancer ontogeny may also regulate physiological cell functions. Targeted therapies have used the properties of leukemic cells to produce altered metabolic products when mutated. This is the case of IDH1/2 mutations generating the abnormal conversion of α-ketoglutarate (KG) to 2-hydroxyglutarate, an oncometabolite inhibiting KG-dependent enzymes, such as the TET family of genes (pivotal in characterizing leukemia cells either by mutations, e.g., TET2, or by altered expression, e.g., TET1/2/3). Additional observations derive from the high sensitivity of leukemic cells to oxidative phosphorylation and its amelioration using BCL-2 inhibitors (Venetoclax) or by disrupting the mitochondrial respiration. More recently, nicotinamide metabolism has been described to mediate resistance to Venetoclax in patients with acute myeloid leukemia. Herein, we will provide an overview of the latest research on the link between metabolic pathways interactome and leukemogenesis with a comprehensive analysis of the metabolic consequences of driver genetic lesions and exemplificative druggable pathways.     

Non-stationarity in MODIS fAPAR time-series and its impact on operational drought detection

A time-series of fAPAR (fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation) data collected by the MODIS (MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) Terra satellite between 2001 and 2016 has been analysed at global scale in order to identify possible areas interested by a linear temporal trend. The main scope of this study is to quantify how the possible trend may affect estimates of drought events based on 10-day fAPAR standardized anomalies (z values). The trend analysis, performed according to the Theil–Sen approach, highlighted that about 10% of the globe shows a statistically significant trend (following the Mann–Kendall test at p = 0.05), mostly being positive (increasing fAPAR). The impact of such a trend on standardized anomalies has been formally expressed as a linear function of two quantities: 1) the z value itself, and 2) the year under investigation. This approach allows summarising the variations in z into just two parameters. In the case of negative anomalies (of greater interest for drought analyses) and the most recent years on the time-series (of greater interest for operational monitoring systems), the use of a stationary (no trend) reference tends to underestimate both severity and extension of the areas interested by drought compared to the non-stationary (or trend stationary) reference. The areas mostly interested by significant differences in the outputs of stationary and non-stationary analyses are the Indian subcontinent, eastern China and the Mediterranean countries. As an example of the impacts of the choice of one of the two frameworks on drought monitoring, the results for the recent summer drought in Italy in 2017 have been reported. This example demonstrates how the non-stationary approach tends to be conservative compared to the stationary one, with the former detecting larger affected areas and higher average severity compared to the latter.     

Pyramidal neural networks with evolved variable receptive fields

Pyramidal neural networks (PNN) are computational systems inspired by the concept of receptive fields from the human visual system. These neural networks are designed for implicit feature extraction and have been applied in pattern recognition applications. In the original approach, the size of the receptive field within the same 2D layer is a constant parameter, while in the human visual system, the receptive field size is variable. This paper proposes a PNN with variable receptive fields determined by an evolutionary algorithm, called variable pyramidal neural network with evolutionary algorithms. We observed from experiments aiming at detecting faces in images that our approach can achieve better classification rates than the original PNN. We also observed that regions with more information (such as nose and eyes) are more emphasized by variable receptive fields. These results confirm the application of intelligent algorithms to determine adjustable receptive fields in neural networks is useful to find out relevant information for recognition task. Besides, the model is comparable to biological systems regarding the flexibility assigned to receptive fields.

     

Grain Refinement of Alloys in Fusion-Based Additive Manufacturing Processes

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A - One of the less desirable aspects of fusion-based additive manufacturing is the propensity for coarse columnar grain structures crossing build layers to...     

Studies on the browning of fino sherry and its relation to polyphenolic compounds

Summary The contents of total polyphenols (using the Jerumanis method) as well as phenolic acids and aldehydes (using highperformance liquid chromatography) and their relationship to the browning of Jerez sherry were studied. The results were compared with the accelerated browning process (oxygen saturation and heating at 50° C for several days), which appears commonly in the bibliography, and the natural browning process (which occurs naturally in the bottle). It was shown that the accelerated browning process cannot be used to stimulate the natural browning phenomenon (remontado) of fino sherry, as different results were obtained.

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Studien über das Braunwerden des feinen Sherrys und seine Beziehung zu polyphenolischen Verbindungen

Zusammenfassung Es wurde der Gehalt der Gesamtpolyphenole mit der Jerumanis-Methode (einschließlich der phenolischen Säuren und Aldehyde unter Verwendung der HPLC-Technik) und deren Beziehung zum Braunwerden von Jerez Sherry verfolgt. Die Ergebnisse wurden mit der in der Literatur vorgeschlagenen Technik des beschleunigten Braunwerdens (Sauerstoffsättigung und mehrtägiges Erhitzen auf 50 °C) und dem Braunwerden in natürlicher Weise in der Flasche verglichen. Es konnte bewiesen werden, daß beschleunigtes Braunwerden kein guter Ersatz für das natürliche Braunwerden (remontado) des feinen Sherryweines ist. Verschiedene Resultate gegenüber natürlich braungewordenem Sherry bestätigen dies.