Antioxidant and antiproliferative activities of mango (Mangifera indica L.) flesh and peel

The antioxidant and antiproliferative properties of flesh and peel of mango (Mangifera indica L.) were investigated. The cytoprotective effect of mango flesh and peel extracts on oxidative damage induced by H₂O₂ in a human hepatoma cell line, HepG2, were determined, and the underlying mechanism was examined by a single-cell electrophoresis assay (comet assay). Treatment of HepG2 cell with mango peel extract prior to oxidative stress was found to inhibit DNA damage. The free radical scavenging activities of mango flesh and peel extracts were evaluated by electron spin resonance (ESR). The mango peel extract exhibited stronger free radical scavenging ability on 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) and alkyl radicals than mango flesh extract, regardless of ripeness. Similarly, peel extract exhibited significant antiproliferative effect against all tested cancer cell lines, compared to that of flesh extract, in a dose-dependent manner. The result also showed that the antiproliferative activity of mango flesh and peel extracts correlated with their phenolic and flavonoid contents. Thus, mango peel, a major by-product obtained during the processing of mango product, exhibited good antioxidant activity and may serve as a potential source of phenolics with anticancer activity.     

On hypercube packings,blocking sets and a covering problem

Consider sets S of hypercubes of side 2 in the discrete n-dimensional torus of side 4 with the property that every possible hypercube of side 2 has a nonempty intersection with some hypercube in S. The problem of minimizing the size of S is studied in two settings, depending on whether intersections between hypercubes in S are allowed or not. If intersections are not allowed, then one is asking for the smallest size of a non-extensible packing S  ; this size is denoted by f(n)$f(n)$. If intersections are allowed, then the structure S is called a blocking set. The smallest size of a blocking set S   is denoted by h(n)$h(n)$. By computer-aided techniques, it is shown that f(5)=12$f(5)=12$, f(6)=16$f(6)=16$, h(6)=15$h(6)=15$ and h(7)≤23$h(7)\le 23$. Also, non-extensible packings as well as blocking sets of certain small sizes are classified for n≤6$n\le 6$. There is a direct connection between these problems and a covering problem originating from the football pools.     

An intelligent system for gastrointestinal polyp detection in endoscopic video using fusion of bidimensional empirical mode decomposition and convolutional neural network features

This paper presents an intelligent system for gastrointestinal polyp detection in endoscopic video. Video endoscopy is a popular diagnostic modality in assessing the gastrointestinal polyps. But the accuracy of diagnosis mostly depends on doctors' experience that is crucial to detect polyps in many cases. Computer-aided polyp detection is promising to reduce the miss detection rate of polyp and thus improve the accuracy of diagnosis results. The proposed method illustrates an automatic system based on a new color feature extraction scheme as a support for gastrointestinal polyp detection. The scheme is the combination of color empirical mode decomposition features and convolutional neural network features extracted from video frames. The features are fed into a linear support vector machine to train the classifier. Experiments on standard public databases show that the proposed scheme outperforms the previous conventional methods, gaining accuracy of 99.53%, sensitivity of 99.91%, and specificity of 99.15%.     

Induction of apoptosis by ethanolic extract of mango peel and comparative analysis of the chemical constitutes of mango peel and flesh

The underlying mechanisms of the anticancer activity of the ethanolic extract of mango peel (EEMP) and its constituents were investigated. EEMP induced death of human cervical carcinoma HeLa cells through apoptosis, as evidenced by the increased cell population in the sub-G1 phase and the appearance of fragmented nuclei. Treatment of the cells with EEMP also downregulated anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 expression, resulting in the proteolytic activation of caspase-3, 7, 8, and 9 and the degradation of poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) protein. The major components of mango peel were identified by liquid chromatography–electrospray ionisation tandem mass spectrometry and gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Our data suggest that EEMP is an excellent source of quercetin 3-O-galactoside, mangiferin gallate, isomangiferin gallate, quercetin-3-O-arabinopyranoside, and mangiferin along with unsaturated fatty acids oleic acid, linoleic acid, and ethyl linoleate, which may help to prevent cervical cancer and may be a useful agent for the treatment of some other malignancies.     

Comparative antioxidant and antiproliferative activities of red and white pitayas and their correlation with flavonoid and polyphenol content

Pitaya, commonly known as dragon fruit, has generated considerable consumer interest because of its attractive color and micronutrient content. The present study investigated the total polyphenol and flavonoid content, antioxidant activity against various free radicals, and antiproliferative effect on several cancer cell lines of extracts of flesh and peel of white and red pitayas, collected from Jeju Island, Korea. The total polyphenol and flavonoid contents of 80% methanol extracts of red pitaya peel (RPP) and white pitaya peel (WPP) were approximately 3- and 5-fold higher than those of red pitaya flesh (RPF) and white pitaya flesh (WPF), respectively. Overall, the total flavonoid and polyphenol contents of these extracts were RPP>WPP>RPF>WPF and WPP>RPP>RPF>WPF, respectively. In addition, a study involving nontargeted high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with a photodiode array and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (HPLC-PDA-ESI-MS) of different pitaya extracts indicated the presence of phenolic, hydroxycinnamic acid derivatives, flavonol glycosides, betacyanin, and its derivatives with a few unknown compounds. Separately, peel extracts of both red and white pitayas showed higher 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl, hydroxyl, and alkyl radical-scavenging activity than did the corresponding flesh extracts. Both peel extracts also showed stronger antiproliferative activity against AGS and MCF-7 cancer cells than either flesh extract. There was a direct correlation between the phenolic content and antioxidant effect, but no correlation observed between antioxidant activity and antiproliferative activity. These results suggest that the peel of white and red pitaya may be a valuable ingredient in foods and may also be useful in cosmetic, nutraceutical, and pharmaceutical applications.     

The chloroform fraction of guava (Psidium cattleianum sabine) leaf extract inhibits human gastric cancer cell proliferation via induction of apoptosis

The antiproliferative activities of the chloroform fraction (CF) of guava (Psidium cattleianum Sabine) leaf extract were evaluated using several cancer cell lines. Maximum cytotoxicity was observed in SNU-16, a human gastric carcinoma cell line, at concentrations of 50–100 μg/ml. Flow cytometric analysis demonstrated that CF treatment resulted in a marked accumulation of SNU-16 cells in the sub-G1 phase at concentrations of 100–200 μg/ml. The induction of apoptosis in SNU-16 cells was confirmed by immunoblotting using antibodies against Bcl-2, Bax, poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP), caspase-8, and caspase-3. The major CF phytochemicals were identified as ferulic acid, genistein, 3′, 4′, 5′ trimethoxy flavone, phlorizin, and oleanolic acid by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with a photo diode array and electrospray ionisation mass spectrometry (HPLC–PDA-ESI-MS). The results suggest that phytochemicals in the CF of guava (P. cattleianum) leaf extract induce apoptosis in SNU-16 cells. These findings may lead to new strategies for treating human gastric cancer.     

Performance Analysis of a Differential Evolution Algorithm in Modeling Parameter Extraction of Optical Material

Determination of accurate modeling parameters of optical materials prior to defining the materials in the simulation model is fundamentally important to obtain simulation results close to the experimental ones. However, extracting modeling parameters of optical materials is inherently difficult because it involves fitting both real and imaginary parts of the relative permittivity using a single set of parameters. In this paper, an evolutionary algorithm called differential evolution (DE) has been utilized to extract the optical modeling parameters of graphene oxide. The performance of DE to find the optimal results has been analyzed by using different objective functions and boundary values. Two objective functions are used out of which one is proposed by us. Root-means-square (RMS) deviation, a measure of accuracy of the numerically obtained results has been determined for each case. From the obtained results it has been found that the DE algorithm extracted the optical modeling parameters successfully with very small RMS deviation for both real and imaginary parts of the complex relative permittivity.     

Methane decomposition kinetics and reaction rate over Ni/SiO2 nanocatalyst produced through co-precipitation cum modified Stöber method

Co-precipitation cum modified Stöber method was adopted to produce nano-Ni/SiO₂ (n-Ni/SiO₂) catalyst and conducted a series of methane decomposition kinetic experiments in a fixed bed pilot plant. Methane decomposition activity of n-Ni/SiO₂ catalyst was quantified by considering thermodynamic deposition of carbon at a temperature range of 550–650 °C and methane partial pressure from 0.2 to 0.8 atm. The utmost methane conversion of 18.87 mmol/g_cat min was obtained at 650 °C and methane partial pressure of 0.8 atm. The findings concluded that the enhancement occurred with carbon formation rate when increasing the methane partial pressure is very much evident at higher temperature such as 650 °C. However, the intensity in methane decomposition descending tendency was declined at lower reaction temperature. The effects of methane partial pressure and reaction temperature on the specific molar carbon formation rate were also examined. The calculated reaction order and activation energy were 1.40 and 61.1 kJ mol^?1, respectively. The kinetic experiments showed the existence of an optimum reaction condition to achieve the highest performance of n-Ni/SiO₂ catalyst in terms of methane decomposition rate. However, carbon accumulation ceases once complete catalyst deactivation occurred at certain reaction conditions such as high temperature and lower methane partial pressure. Virgin nanocatalyst and as-produced nanocarbons were studied with BET, XRD, and TEM.