Curcumin Attenuated Neurotoxicity in Sporadic Animal Model of Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases leading to dementia. Despite research efforts, currently there are no effective pharmacotherapeutic options for the prevention and treatment of AD. Recently, numerous studies highlighted the beneficial effects of curcumin (CUR), a natural polyphenol, in the neuroprotection. Especially, its dual antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties attracted the interest of researchers. In fact, besides its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, this biomolecule is not degraded in the intestinal tract. Additionally, CUR is able to cross the blood–brain barrier and could therefore to be used to treat neurodegenerative pathologies associated with oxidative stress, inflammation and apoptosis. The present study aimed to assess the ability of CUR to induce neuronal protective and/or recovery effects on a rat model of neurotoxicity induced by aluminum chloride (AlCl₃), which mimics the sporadic form of Alzheimer’s disease. Our results showed that treatment with CUR enhances pro-oxidant levels, antioxidant enzymes activities and anti-inflammatory cytokine production and decreases apoptotic cells in AlCl₃-exposed hippocampus rats. Additionally, histopathological analysis of hippocampus revealed the potential of CUR in decreasing the hallmarks in the AlCl₃-induced AD. We also showed that CUR post-treatment significantly improved the behavioral, oxidative stress and inflammation in AlCl₃-exposed rats. Taken together, our data presented CUR as a nutraceutical potential through its protective effects that are more interesting than recovery ones in sporadic model of AD.     

Use of thermal analysis to predict the conditions for thermal explosion to occur: application to a Ce triethanolamine complex

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - Thermal energy storage (TES) has been identified as a breakthrough concept in development of renewable technologies. However, the main challenges are...     

A variance-based method to rank input variables of the Mesh Adaptive Direct Search algorithm

The Mesh Adaptive Direct Search algorithm (Mads) algorithm is designed for nonsmooth blackbox optimization problems in which the evaluation of the functions defining the problems are expensive to compute. The Mads algorithm is not designed for problems with a large number of variables. The present paper uses a statistical tool based on variance decomposition to rank the relative importance of the variables. This statistical method is then coupled with the Mads algorithm so that the optimization is performed either in the entire space of variables or in subspaces associated with statistically important variables. The resulting algorithm is called Stats-Mads and is tested on bound constrained test problems having up to 500 variables. The numerical results show a significant improvement in the objective function value after a fixed budget of function evaluations.     

Nutritional requirements of a strain of bacillus thuringiensis subsp. kurstaki and use of gruel hydrolysate for the formulation of a new medium for δ-endotoxin production

Nutritional requirements of a strain ofBacillus thuringiensis (Bt) subsp.kurstaki were elucidated for δ-endotoxin production. The effect of some principal nutrients was deeply investigated, showing several nutritional and metabolite limitations in Bt growth and δ-endotoxin synthesis. This led us to formulate a new medium based on the hydrolysate of gruel, a cheap and abundant byproduct of semolina factories, supporting growth and δ-endotoxin synthesis. After hydrolysis of gruel by α-amylase, followed by proteolysis using alcalase, the resultant soluble material substituted glucose very well for Bt δ-endotoxin production. Indeed, 15 g/L total sugars coming from that hydrolysate, supplemented by 5.4 g/L ammonium sulfate as nitrogen source and either 5 g/L yeast extract or 3 g/L peptone from casein or 3 g/L casaminoacids or 0.25 g/L cysteine or aspartic acid, were the principal components of this new medium in which almost 1 g/L of δ-endotoxin in 4.5 g/L total dry biomass was produced.     

Crystal structure and electrical properties study of 4-aminopyridinium chloridobismuthate (III) (C5N2H7)4.HBi2Cl11

The crystal structure of (C₅N₂H₇)₄.HBi₂Cl₁₁ has been determined at room temperature by single crystal X-ray diffraction. The compound crystallizes in the triclinic system with Pī space group. The crystal structure consists of two asymmetric inequivalent molecules of 4-aminopyridinium and anionic HBi₂Cl₁₁ chains. The HBi₂Cl₁₁ anionic chains stacked along the a-axis are formed with Bi₂Cl₁₁ dimers connected to each other via hydrogen atoms. The crystal packing is stabilized with N–H...Cl hydrogen bonds connecting aminopyridinium units to the HBi₂Cl₁₁ anionic chains. The title compound exhibits an order–disorder phase transition at 338 K. The AC electrical conductivity properties of (C₅N₂H₇)₄.HBi₂Cl₁₁ compound have been investigated by means of impedance spectroscopy measurements over wide ranges of frequencies and temperatures, 200 Hz to 5 MHz and 303 to 418 K, respectively. Detailed analysis of the impedance spectrum suggests that the electrical properties of the material are strongly temperature dependent. The frequency-dependent conductivity data were fitted in the Jonscher's law: $ \sigma \left( \omega \right) = \sigma (0) + A{\omega^n} $ . The nature of variation of DC conductivity suggests Arrhenius type of electrical conductivity.     

Some Generalized q-Bessel Type Wavelets and Associated Transforms

In this paper wavelet functions are introduced in the context of q-theory.We precisely extend the case of Bessel and q-Bessel wavelets to the generalized q-Bessel wavelets.Starting from the(q,v)-extension(v =(α,β)) of the q-case,associated generalized q-wavelets and generalized q-wavelet transforms are developed for the new context.Reconstruction and Placherel type formulas are proved.     

Dealing with external actions in belief causal networks

Graphical models are efficient and simple ways to represent dependencies between variables. We introduce in this paper the so-called belief causal networks where dependencies are uncertain causal links and where the uncertainty is represented by belief masses. Through these networks, we propose to represent the results of passively observing the spontaneous behavior of the system and also evaluate the effects of external actions. Interventions are very useful for representing causal relations, we propose to compute their effects using a generalization of the “do” operator. Even if the belief chain rule is different from the Bayesian chain rule, we show that the joint distributions of the altered structures to graphically describe interventions are equivalent. This paper also addresses new issues that are arisen when handling interventions: we argue that in real world applications, external manipulations may be imprecise and show that they have a natural encoding under the belief function framework.     

Synthesis and Crystal Structure of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Tris</Emphasis>-(<Emphasis Type="Italic">N</Emphasis>–<Emphasis Type="Italic">N</Emphasis> dimethyl benzylammonium)-hexachlorobismuthate(III)

Abstract  The salt tris-(N–N dimethyl benzylammonium)-hexachlorobismuthate(III) crystallizes in the triclinic system P1 with unit cell parameters: a = 9.0300(12), b = 9.9220(3), c = 19.575(2) ?, α = 79.955(5), β = 89.952(2), γ = 88.108(6)°, V = 1726.0(3) ?³, Z = 2. The examination of the structure shows an alternate stacking of inorganic layers of hexachlorobismuthate(III) anions and organic layers of [C₆H₅CH₂NH(CH₃)₂]⁺ cations parallel to the a-axis. The cohesion forces of the packing of N–N dimethyl benzylammonium units in the layer and between two adjacent layers are provided by hydrogen bonds (N–H⋯Cl) and van der Waals contacts. Index Abstract  The examination of the structure shows a layer arrangement parallel to the a-axis: planes of octahedral anions [BiCl₆]³⁻ alternate with planes of [C₆H₅CH₂NH(CH₃)₂]⁺ cations (Fig. 3). The cohesion forces of the packing of the N–N dimethyl benzylammonium units in the layer and between two adjacent layers are provided by hydrogen bonds (N–H⋯Cl) and van der Waals contacts. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

Crystal structure and phase transition in the compound [C6H5CH2NH(CH3)2]TlCl4

The N‐N dimethyl benzylammonium tetrachlorothallate (III) [C₆H₅CH₂NH(CH₃)₂]TlCl₄ crystallizes in the monoclinic system P2₁/n at room temperature with the following unit cell dimensions: a = 7.725(3) Å, b = 14.080(5) Å, c = 13.697(4) Å, β = 91.2(2)° with Z = 4. The structure shows a layer arrangement perpendicular to the b axis: planes of [TlCl₄]^‐ tetrahedra alternate with planes of [C₆H₅CH₂NH(CH₃)₂]⁺ cations. The cohesion of the atomic arrangement is ensured by hydrogen bonds N‐H…Cl. Differential scanning calorimetric and optical birefringence measurements reveals a phase transition at T = 339K. Raman spectroscopic study and dielectric measurements were performed to discuss the mechanism of the phase transition. (© 2007 WILEY ‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)