Studies on oral bioavailability and first‐pass metabolism of withaferin A in rats using LC–MS/MS and Q‐TRAP

Withaferin A (WA) is one of the major bioactive steroidal lactones with extensive pharmacological activities present in the plant Withania somnifera. The absolute oral bioavailability of WA remains unknown and human‐related in vitro data are not available. Therefore, in the present study, the absolute oral bioavailability of WA in male rats and the in vitro screening of absorption factors by Q‐trap and LC–MS/MS analysis were conducted to explore possible clinical properties of WA. The developed and validated analytical methods were successfully applied to the pharmacokinetic studies and in vitro measurement of WA. The oral bioavailability was determined to be 32.4 ± 4.8% based on intravenous (5 mg/kg) and oral (10 mg/kg) administrations of WA in male rats. The in vitro results showed that WA could be easily transported across Caco‐2 cells and WA did not show as a substrate for P‐glycoprotein. Moreover, the stability of WA was similar between male rat and human in simulated gastric fluid (stable), in intestinal microflora solution (slow decrease) and in liver microsomes (rapid depletion, with a half‐life of 5.6 min). As such, the first‐pass metabolism of WA was further verified by rat intestine‐liver in situ perfusion, revealing that WA rapidly decreased and 27.1% remained within 1 h, while the content of three major metabolites (M1, M4, M5) identified by Q‐trap increased. This perfusion result is consistent with the oral bioavailability results in vivo. The first‐pass metabolism of WA might be the main barrier in achieving good oral bioavailability in male rats and it is predicted to be similar in humans. This study may hold clinical significance.     

Charged pion condensation in anti-parallel electromagnetic fields and nonzero isospin density

The formation of charged pion condensate in anti-parallel electromagnetic fields and in the presence of the isospin chemical potential is studied in the two-flavor Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model.The method of Schwinger proper time is extended to explore the quantities in the off-diagonal flavor space,i.e.the charged pion.In this framework,π^± are treated as bound states of quarks and not as point-like charged particles.The isospin chemical potential plays the role of a trigger for charged pion condensation.We obtain the associated effective potential as a function of the strength of the electromagnetic fields and find that it contains a sextic term which possibly induces a weak first order phase transition.The dependence of pion condensation on model parameters is investigated.     

Simple Equations Method (SEsM): Algorithm,Connection with Hirota Method,Inverse Scattering Transform Method,and Several Other Methods

The goal of this article is to discuss the Simple Equations Method (SEsM) for obtaining exact solutions of nonlinear partial differential equations and to show that several well-known methods for obtaining exact solutions of such equations are connected to SEsM. In more detail, we show that the Hirota method is connected to a particular case of SEsM for a specific form of the function from Step 2 of SEsM and for simple equations of the kinds of differential equations for exponential functions. We illustrate this particular case of SEsM by obtaining the three- soliton solution of the Korteweg-de Vries equation, two-soliton solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and the soliton solution of the Ishimori equation for the spin dynamics of ferromagnetic materials. Then we show that a particular case of SEsM can be used in order to reproduce the methodology of the inverse scattering transform method for the case of the Burgers equation and Korteweg-de Vries equation. This particular case is connected to use of a specific case of Step 2 of SEsM. This step is connected to: (i) representation of the solution of the solved nonlinear partial differential equation as expansion as power series containing powers of a “small” parameter ϵ; (ii) solving the differential equations arising from this representation by means of Fourier series, and (iii) transition from the obtained solution for small values of ϵ to solution for arbitrary finite values of ϵ. Finally, we show that the much-used homogeneous balance method, extended homogeneous balance method, auxiliary equation method, Jacobi elliptic function expansion method, F-expansion method, modified simple equation method, trial function method and first integral method are connected to particular cases of SEsM.     

Enhanced electronic and nonlinear optical responses of C24N24 cavernous nitride fullerene by decoration with first row transition metals; A computational investigation

The electronic (energy gap and work function) as well as electrical properties (dipole moment, polarizability, and first hyperpolarizabilities) of the first-row transition metals decorated C₂₄N₂₄ cavernous nitride fullerene were explored using DFT calculations. The transition metals are decorated at N4 cavity of C₂₄N₂₄ fullerene. According to our spin polarized computations, the most stable spin state monotonically increases to sextet for Mn@C₂₄N₂₄ and thereafter dropped off gradually to singlet state for Zn@C₂₄N₂₄ system. The findings demonstrate that transition metals can remarkably decrease the HOMO-LUMO energy gap and work function values up to 63% and 21% of bare C₂₄N₂₄, respectively. As can be seen, when the Sc and Ti metals are located above the N4 cavity of fullerene, systems of enhanced static hyperpolarizabilities (β₀) are delivered. These findings might provide an effective strategy to design high performance eletcro-optical materials based on carbon- nitride fullerene.     

Solvability of a nonlinear fifth‐order difference equation

Some formulas for well‐defined solutions to four very special cases of a nonlinear fifth‐order difference equation have been presented recently in this journal, where some of them were proved by the method of induction, some are only quoted, and no any theory behind the formulas was given. Here, we show in an elegant constructive way how the general solution to the difference equation can be obtained, from which the special cases very easily follow, which is also demonstrated here. We also give some comments on the local stability results on the special cases of the nonlinear fifth‐order difference equation previously publish in this journal.     

Codimension reduction in symmetric spaces

In this paper we give a short geometric proof of a generalization of a well-known result about reduction of codimension for submanifolds of Riemannian symmetric spaces.     

Index transforms with Weber-type kernels

New index transforms with Weber-type kernels, consisting of products of Bessel functions of the first and second kind, are investigated. Mapping properties and inversion formulas are established for these transforms in Lebesgue spaces. The results are applied to solve a boundary value problem on the wedge for a fourth-order partial differential equation.     

Another characterization of homogeneous Poisson processes

For a general renewal process N (allowing delay, defect and multiple simultaneous arrivals) the independence of the first renewal epochs of the marked processes got from N by Bernoulli 0/1 thinning is characterized. This independence is well-known to hold true in the case of homogeneous Poisson processes; by way of corollary one obtains the interesting observation that, when coupled with some minimal extra conditions, it in fact already identifies them. The proof is analytic in character.