Improvement of Glycaemia and Endothelial Function by a New Low-Dose Curcuminoid in an Animal Model of Type 2 Diabetes

Curcumin has been suggested as a promising treatment for metabolic diseases, but the high doses required limit its therapeutic use. In this study, a new curcuminoid is synthesised to increase curcumin anti-inflammatory and antioxidant potential and to achieve hypoglycaemic and protective vascular effects in type 2 diabetic rats in a lower dose. In vitro, the anti-inflammatory effect was determined through the Griess reaction, and the antioxidant activity through ABTS and TBARS assays. In vivo, Goto-Kakizaki rats were treated for 2 weeks with the equimolar dose of curcumin (40 mg/kg/day) or curcuminoid (52.4 mg/kg/day). Fasting glycaemia, insulin tolerance, plasma insulin, insulin signalling, serum FFA, endothelial function and several markers of oxidative stress were evaluated. Both compounds presented a significant anti-inflammatory effect. Moreover, the curcuminoid had a marked hypoglycaemic effect, accompanied by higher GLUT4 levels in adipose tissue. Both compounds increased NO-dependent vasorelaxation, but only the curcuminoid exacerbated the response to ascorbic acid, consistent with a higher decrease in vascular oxidative and nitrosative stress. SOD1 and GLO1 levels were increased in EAT and heart, respectively. Altogether, these data suggest that the curcuminoid developed here has more pronounced effects than curcumin in low doses, improving the oxidative stress, endothelial function and glycaemic profile in type 2 diabetes.     

Therapeutic Vaccines for HPV-Associated Oropharyngeal and Cervical Cancer: The Next De-Intensification Strategy?

The rise in human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) has prompted a quest for further understanding of the role of high-risk HPV in tumor initiation and progression. Patients with HPV-positive OPSCC (HPV+ OPSCC) have better prognoses than their HPV-negative counterparts; however, current therapeutic strategies for HPV+ OPSCC are overly aggressive and leave patients with life-long sequalae and poor quality of life. This highlights a need for customized treatment. Several clinical trials of treatment de-intensification to reduce acute and late toxicity without compromising efficacy have been conducted. This article reviews the differences and similarities in the pathogenesis and progression of HPV-related OPSCC compared to cervical cancer, with emphasis on the role of prophylactic and therapeutic vaccines as a potential de-intensification treatment strategy. Overall, the future development of novel and effective therapeutic agents for HPV-associated head and neck tumors promises to meet the challenges posed by this growing epidemic.     

Modafinil Administration to Preadolescent Rat Impairs Non-Selective Attention,Frontal Cortex D2 Expression and Mesolimbic GABA Levels

The misuse of psychostimulants is an increasing behavior among young people, highlighting in some countries the abuse of modafinil (MOD) as a neuropotentiator. However, several clinical trials are investigating MOD as an alternative pharmacological treatment for attentional deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in children and adolescents. On the other hand, the early use of psychostimulants and the misdiagnosis rates in ADHD make it crucial to investigate the brain effects of this type of drug in young healthy individuals. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effects of chronic MOD treatment on neurochemicals (γ-aminobutyric acid and glutamate), dopamine receptor 2 (D₂) expression and behavior (non-selective attention “NSA”) in the mesocorticolimbic system of young healthy Sprague–Dawley rats. Preadolescent male rats were injected with MOD (75 mg/kg, i.p.) or a vehicle for 14 days (from postnatal day 22 to 35). At postnatal day 36, we measured the GLU and GABA contents and their extracellular levels in the nucleus accumbens (NAc). In addition, the GLU and GABA contents were measured in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) and D₂ protein levels in the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Chronic use of MOD during adolescence induces behavioral and neurochemical changes associated with the mesocorticolimbic system, such as a reduction in PFC D₂ expression, VTA GABA levels and NSA. These results contribute to the understanding of the neurological effects of chronic MOD use on a young healthy brain.     

‘Long autonomy or long delay?’ The importance of domain in opinion mining

Nowadays, people do not only navigate the web, but they also contribute contents to the Internet. Among other things, they write their thoughts and opinions in review sites, forums, social networks, blogs and other websites. These opinions constitute a valuable resource for businesses, governments and consumers. In the last years, some researchers have proposed opinion extraction systems, mostly domain-independent ones, to automatically extract structured representations of opinions contained in those texts. In this work, we tackle this task in a domain-oriented approach, defining a set of domain-specific resources which capture valuable knowledge about how people express opinions on a given domain. These resources are automatically induced from a set of annotated documents. Some experiments were carried out on three different domains (user-generated reviews of headphones, hotels and cars), comparing our approach to other state-of-the-art, domain-independent techniques. The results confirm the importance of the domain in order to build accurate opinion extraction systems. Some experiments on the influence of the dataset size and an example of aggregation and visualization of the extracted opinions are also shown.     

Optically transparent monopole antenna with high radiation efficiency manufactured with silver grid layer (AgGL)

A technology based on a meshed silver/titanium bilayer printed on glass substrate is briefly presented. A sheet resistance equal to 0.054 /sq with 81.3 of optical transparency is obtained. The performances of a monopole antenna made from such a material have been investigated. The measured S₁₁ and gain of the transparent antenna are compared with those of an antenna fabricated from a reflective silver/titanium film, and stand for reference. The transparent antenna provides radiation efficiency better than 85%.     

COD: alternative architectures for high speed packet switching

Architectures for packet switches are approaching the limit of electronic switching speed. This raises the question of how best to utilize advances in photonic technology to enable higher speeds. The authors introduce cascaded optical delay line (COD) architectures. The COD architectures utilize an extremely simple distributed electronic control algorithm to configure the states of 2×2 photonic switches and use optical fiber delay lines to temporarily buffer packets if necessary. The simplicity of the architectures may also make them suitable for “lightweight” all-electronic implementations. For optical implementations, the number of 2×2 photonic switches used is a significant factor determining cost. The authors present a “baseline” architecture for a 2×2 buffered packet switch that is work conserving and has the first-in, first-out (FIFO) property. If the arrival processes are independent and without memory, the maximum utilization factor is ρ, and the maximum acceptable packet loss probability is ϵ, then the required number of 2×2 photonic switches is O(log(ϵ)/log(γ)), where γ=ρ²/(ρ²+4-4ρ). If one modifies the baseline architecture by changing the delay line lengths then the system is no longer work conserving and loses the FIFO property, but the required number of 2×2 photonic switches is reduced to O(log[log(ϵ)/log(γ)]). The required number of 2×2 photonic switches is essentially insensitive to the distribution of packet arrivals, but long delay lines are required for bursty traffic     

Wavelength-switchable fiber laser using acoustic waves

We report a wavelength-switchable fiber ring laser that includes a Bragg grating-based acoustooptic superlattice modulator. Wavelength switching of the laser emission is achieved by controlling the peak reflectivity of the different reflection bands that appear on both sides of the Bragg wavelength when a longitudinal acoustic wave propagates along the grating.     

Characterization of new FIR laser lines from CHD/sub 2/OH

In this work, we report new optically pumped far-infrared (FIR) laser lines from CHD/sub 2/OH. A waveguide CO/sub 2/ laser of wide tunability (290 MHz) was used as pump source, and a Fabry-Pe/spl acute/rot open cavity was used as a FIR laser resonator. Optoacoustic absorption spectra were used as a guide to search for new FIR laser lines. We could observe 15 new laser lines in the range from 116.4 to 401.4 /spl mu/m. The lines were characterized according to wavelength, relative polarization, relative intensity, and optimum working pressure. The transferred Lamb-dip technique was used to measure the frequency absorption transition both for the new and previously reported laser lines.     

Continuous-wave and giant-pulse operations of a single-frequency erbium-doped fiber laser

We present a compact diode-pumped single-frequency single-polarization erbium-doped fiber laser with fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) written in the active fiber itself. The single-polarization regime was obtained by applying uni-axial stress to one of the two FBGs forming the cavity. The laser is shown to operate in two regimes-quasi-continuous-wave regime with a few-percent of modulation in the output power and a giant-pulse regime accessible under sinusoidal pump modulation.     

Experimental analysis of corner-fed printed square patch antennas

An experimental analysis is developed for the corner-fed printed square patch antenna, taking into account the width of the feeding junction and the proximity of the microstrip feedline. New accurate design relations for resonance frequency and input impedance are deduced, directly usable for the computer aided design of printed antenna arrays.<>