Polarity guided extraction,HPLC based phytochemical quantification,and multimode biological evaluation of Otostegia limbata (Benth.) Boiss

Purpose of studyOtostegia limbata (Benth.) Boiss. (Family: Lamiacae) is an important underexplored ethnomedicinal plant that has been used as antinflammatory, anticancer and antibacterial herbal remedy previously. The present work was aimed to evaluate the antioxidant, antimicrobial, antileishmanial, and anticancer prospective of O. limbata stem and leaf extracts.ResultsThe highest amount of phenolic and flavonoid content was obtained in the methanol-acetone and methanol stem extracts i.e., 53.29 ± 1.33 and 28.64 ± 1.16, respectively with highest DPPH scavenging in MeH stem extract (IC₅₀ = 34.5 ± 1.34 μg/ml). Significant amount of catechin, gallic acid, apigenin and rutin was quantified. A moderate antibacterial and substantial antifungal activity was observed. Cytotoxicity against brine shrimps categorized 21% of stem (3 out of 14 extracts) and 57% (8 out of 14 extracts) of leaf extracts as potent. Substantial cytotoxicity against THP-1 cell line (IC₅₀ = 3.46 ± 0.25 μg/ml) and Leishmania (IC₅₀ = 1.50 ± 0.23 μg/ml) was exhibited by methanol-distilled water leaf extract while noteworthy antiproliferative activity against Hep-G2 (IC₅₀ = 0.44 ± 0.45 μg/ml) was manifested by n-hexane stem extract. Absence of hemolysis in normal RBCs signified plant’s selective cytotoxicity. Methanol-distilled water and chloroform stem extracts displayed prominent protein kinase inhibition and antidiabetic potential of plant.ConclusionThe results of present study recommend O. limbata as a potential source of antifungal, antileishmanial, anticancer, and α-amylase inhibitory agents.     

真空紫外光电离质谱技术进展及其在快速分析中的应用

真空紫外光电离源(VUV-PI)是一种普适性的质谱软电离源,真空紫外光电离质谱谱图无碎片、易解析、灵敏度高,适合于在线快速分析。真空紫外光电离质谱根据分析对象不同可以直接采用单光子电离或添加掺杂剂实现化学电离,能实现气、液、固体分析,也可实现成像分析。该文介绍了真空紫外光电离源的电离原理、光源类型,分析了光电离质谱灵敏度的影响因素及其技术改进措施,并阐述了真空紫外光电离质谱技术在环境污染物、化工产物在线分析、国家安全分析以及生物医学分析中的相关应用研究。最后,总结了真空紫外光电离源的优缺点,并对真空紫外光电离技术在性能和应用方面的发展前景进行了展望。     

Leaf‐Critical and Leaf‐Stable Graphs

The minimum leaf number ml(G) of a connected graph G is defined as the minimum number of leaves of the spanning trees of G if G is not hamiltonian and 1 if G is hamiltonian. We study nonhamiltonian graphs with the property for each or for each . These graphs will be called ‐leaf‐critical and l‐leaf‐stable, respectively. It is far from obvious whether such graphs exist; for example, the existence of 3‐leaf‐critical graphs (that turn out to be the so‐called hypotraceable graphs) was an open problem until 1975. We show that l‐leaf‐stable and l‐leaf‐critical graphs exist for every integer , moreover for n sufficiently large, planar l‐leaf‐stable and l‐leaf‐critical graphs exist on n vertices. We also characterize 2‐fragments of leaf‐critical graphs generalizing a lemma of Thomassen. As an application of some of the leaf‐critical graphs constructed, we settle an open problem of Gargano et al. concerning spanning spiders. We also explore connections with a family of graphs introduced by Grünbaum in correspondence with the problem of finding graphs without concurrent longest paths.     

Partite Saturation Problems

We look at several saturation problems in complete balanced blow‐ups of graphs. We let denote the blow‐up of H onto parts of size n and refer to a copy of H in as partite if it has one vertex in each part of . We then ask how few edges a subgraph G of can have such that G has no partite copy of H but such that the addition of any new edge from creates a partite H. When H is a triangle this value was determined by Ferrara, Jacobson, Pfender, and Wenger in  5 . Our main result is to calculate this value for when n is large. We also give exact results for paths and stars and show that for 2‐connected graphs the answer is linear in n whilst for graphs that are not 2‐connected the answer is quadratic in n. We also investigate a similar problem where G is permitted to contain partite copies of H but we require that the addition of any new edge from creates an extra partite copy of H. This problem turns out to be much simpler and we attain exact answers for all cliques and trees.     

Maximizing H‐Colorings of Connected Graphs with Fixed Minimum Degree

For graphs G and H , an H‐coloring of G is a map from the vertices of G to the vertices of H that preserves edge adjacency. We consider the following extremal enumerative question: for a given H , which connected n‐vertex graph with minimum degree δ maximizes the number of H‐colorings? We show that for nonregular H and sufficiently large n , the complete bipartite graph is the unique maximizer. As a corollary, for nonregular H and sufficiently large n the graph is the unique k‐connected graph that maximizes the number of H‐colorings among all k‐connected graphs. Finally, we show that this conclusion does not hold for all regular H by exhibiting a connected n‐vertex graph with minimum degree δ that has more ‐colorings (for sufficiently large q and n ) than .     

Expression for the Number of Spanning Trees of Line Graphs of Arbitrary Connected Graphs

For any graph G, let be the number of spanning trees of G, be the line graph of G, and for any nonnegative integer r, be the graph obtained from G by replacing each edge e by a path of length connecting the two ends of e. In this article, we obtain an expression for in terms of spanning trees of G by a combinatorial approach. This result generalizes some known results on the relation between and and gives an explicit expression if G is of order and size in which s vertices are of degree 1 and the others are of degree k. Thus we prove a conjecture on for such a graph G.     

Topological Minors of Cover Graphs and Dimension

We show that posets of bounded height whose cover graphs exclude a fixed graph as a topological minor have bounded dimension. This result was already proven by Walczak. However, our argument is entirely combinatorial and does not rely on structural decomposition theorems. Given a poset with large dimension but bounded height, we directly find a large clique subdivision in its cover graph. Therefore, our proof is accessible to readers not familiar with topological graph theory, and it allows us to provide explicit upper bounds on the dimension. With the introduced tools we show a second result that is supporting a conjectured generalization of the previous result. We prove that ‐free posets whose cover graphs exclude a fixed graph as a topological minor contain only standard examples of size bounded in terms of k.     

On the Number of 5‐Cycles in a Tournament

We find a formula for the number of directed 5‐cycles in a tournament in terms of its edge scores and use the formula to find upper and lower bounds on the number of 5‐cycles in any n‐tournament. In particular, we show that the maximum number of 5‐cycles is asymptotically equal to , the expected number 5‐cycles in a random tournament (), with equality (up to order of magnitude) for almost all tournaments.     

On the Minimum Number of Spanning Trees in k‐Edge‐Connected Graphs

We show that a k‐edge‐connected graph on n vertices has at least spanning trees. This bound is tight if k is even and the extremal graph is the n‐cycle with edge multiplicities . For k odd, however, there is a lower bound , where . Specifically, and . Not surprisingly, c₃ is smaller than the corresponding number for 4‐edge‐connected graphs. Examples show that . However, we have no examples of 5‐edge‐connected graphs with fewer spanning trees than the n‐cycle with all edge multiplicities (except one) equal to 3, which is almost 6‐regular. We have no examples of 5‐regular 5‐edge‐connected graphs with fewer than spanning trees, which is more than the corresponding number for 6‐regular 6‐edge‐connected graphs. The analogous surprising phenomenon occurs for each higher odd edge connectivity and regularity.