Antimicrobial activity and cytotoxic effects of Magnolia dealbata and its active compounds

Multi-drug resistance is of great concern for public health worldwide and necessitates the search for new antimicrobials from sources such as plants. Several Magnolia (Magnoliaceae) species have been reported to exert antimicrobial effects on sensitive and multidrug-resistant microorganisms. However, the antimicrobial properties of Magnolia dealbata have not been experimentally evaluated. The antimicrobial effects of an ethanol extract of Magnolia dealbata seeds (MDE) and its active compounds honokiol (HK) and magnolol (MG) were tested against the phytopathogen Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. michiganensis and several human multi-drug resistant pathogens using the disk-diffusion assay. The effects of MDE and its active compounds on the viability of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were evaluated using MTT assay. MDE and its active compounds had antimicrobial activity (inhibition zone > 10 mm) against C. michiganensis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter baumannii, Acinetobacter lwoffii, Candida albicans, Candida tropicalis and Trichosporon belgeii. The results suggest that M. dealbata and its active compounds have selective antimicrobial effects against drug-resistant fungal and Gram (-) bacteria and exert minimal toxic effects on human PMBC.     

Hypolipidemic effect of seed oil of noni (Morinda citrifolia)

Morinda citrifolia, has been reported to posses different biological activities and almost all parts of this have been studied phytochemically. However there are few studies on the seeds of fruit. The objective of present study was investigated the effect to Noni Seed Oil (NSO) on serum lipid levels in normolipidemic and hyperlipidemic induced mice. We find that administration of noni oil causes a reduction in total cholesterol and triglycerides levels in both models. However hypolipidemic effect is higher when hyperlipidemia is presented.     

The discontinuous Galerkin method with reduced integration scheme for the boundary terms in almost incompressible linear elasticity

In this paper, the discontinuous Galerkin (dG) method is introduced and applied for a problem of nearly incompressible material behavior, where the standard finite element method, namely the conventional continuous Galerkin (cG) method faces the well-known problem of volumetric locking. The highlight of the work lies in the reduced integration scheme for the boundary terms of the dG method. Two different reduced and mixed integration schemes are presented and applied to reduce the calculation time. The dG method converges much faster than standard cG method with respect to the number of the elements, provided that the penalty value is sufficiently large. (© 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)