Determination of Phenolic Compounds in Various Propolis Samples Collected from an African and an Asian Region and Their Impact on Antioxidant and Antibacterial Activities

The biological activities of propolis samples are the result of many bioactive compounds present in the propolis. The aim of the present study was to determine the various chemical compounds of some selected propolis samples collected from Palestine and Morocco by the High-Performance Liquid Chromatography–Photodiode Array Detection (HPLC-PDA) method, as well as the antioxidant and antibacterial activities of this bee product. The chemical analysis of propolis samples by HPLC-PDA shows the cinnamic acid content in the Palestinian sample is higher compared to that in Moroccan propolis. The results of antioxidant activity demonstrated an important free radical scavenging activity (2,2-Diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH); 2,2′-azino-bis 3-ethylbenzothiazoline-6-sulphonic acid (ABTS) and reducing power assays) with EC₅₀ values ranging between 0.02 ± 0.001 and 0.14 ± 0.01 mg/mL. Additionally, all tested propolis samples possessed a moderate antibacterial activity against bacterial strains. Notably, Minimum Inhibitory Concentrations (MICs) values ranged from 0.31 to 2.50 mg/mL for Gram-negative bacterial strains and from 0.09 to 0.125 mg/mL for Gram-positive bacterial strains. The S2 sample from Morocco and the S4 sample from Palestine had the highest content of polyphenol level. Thus, the strong antioxidant and antibacterial properties were apparently due to the high total phenolic and flavone/flavonol contents in the samples. As a conclusion, the activities of propolis samples collected from both countries are similar, while the cinnamic acid in the Palestinian samples was more than that of the Moroccan samples.     

Wavelet-Like Transforms for Admissible Semi-Groups; Inversion Formulas for Potentials and Radon Transforms

We introduce a family of wavelet-like transforms associated to certain admissible semigroups of operators acting on L_p-spaces, and prove the corresponding reproducing formula of Calderòn’s type. The new transforms constitute a unified approach to inversion of a wide class of integral operators in analysis and applications. We illustrate the general theory by considering Riesz and Bessel potentials (associated to the ordinary and the generalized translation), and the k-plane Radon transform on ℝⁿ.     

Study of NaCl solutions in a mixed solvent H2O−CH3OH: Experimental densities and comparison with calculated values obtained with a modified Pitzer's model

Densities at 25°C and atmospheric pressure were measured using a densimeter for several aqueous sodium chloride+methanol mixtures. The experimental results were then compared with data calculated using a modified Pitzer's model.     

Chemical Composition Profiling and Antifungal Activity of Saffron Petal Extract

Numerous fungal plant pathogens can infect fresh fruits and vegetables during transit and storage conditions. The resulting infections were mainly controlled by synthetic fungicides, but their application has many drawbacks associated with the threatened environment and human health. Therefore, the use of natural plants with antimicrobial potential could be a promising alternative to overcome the side effects of fungicides. In this regard, this study aimed at evaluating the antifungal activity potential of saffron petal extract (SPE) against three mains important fungal pathogens: Rhizopus stolonifer, Penicillium digitatum and Botritys cinerea, which cause rot decay on the tomato, orange and apple fruits, respectively. In addition, the organic composition of SPE was characterized by attenuated total reflection Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FT-IR) spectroscopy and its biochemical, and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) analyses were carried out. The obtained results highlighted an increased inhibition rate of the mycelial growth and spore germination of the three pathogenic fungi with increasing SPE concentrations. The mycelial growth and spore germination were completely inhibited at 10% of the SPE for Rhizopus stolonifer and Penicillium digitatum and at 5% for B. cinerea. Interestingly, the in vivo test showed the complete suppression of Rhizopus rot by the SPE at 10%, and a significant reduction of the severity of grey mold disease (37.19%) and green mold, when applied at 5 and 10%, respectively. The FT-IR spectra showed characteristic peaks and a variety of functional groups, which confirmed that SPE contains phenolic and flavonoid components. In addition, The average value of the total phenolic content, flavonoid content and half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) were 3.09 ± 0.012 mg GAE/g DW, 0.92 ± 0.004 mg QE/g DW and 235.15 ± 2.12 µg/mL, respectively. A volatile analysis showed that the most dominant component in the saffron petal is 2(5H)-Furanone (92.10%). Taken together, it was concluded that SPE could be used as an alternative to antioxidant and antifungal compounds for the control of postharvest diseases in fruits.     

Determination of mitragynine in plasma with solid-phase extraction and rapid HPLC–UV analysis, and its application to a pharmacokinetic study in rat

A new solid phase extraction method for rapid high performance liquid chromatography–UV determination of mitragynine in plasma has been developed. Optimal separation was achieved with an isocratic mobile phase consisting of acetonitrile–ammonium acetate buffer, 50 mM at pH 5.0 (50:50, v/v). The method had limits of detection and quantification of 0.025 and 0.050 μg/mL, respectively. The method was accurate and precise for the quantitative analysis of mitragynine in human and rat plasma with within-day and between-day accuracies between 84.0 and 109.6%, and their precision values were between 1.7 and 16.8%. Additional advantages over known methods are related to the solid phase extraction technique for sample preparation which yields a clean chromatogram, a short total analysis time, requires a smaller amount of plasma samples and has good assay sensitivity for bioanalytical application. The method was successfully applied in pharmacokinetic and stability studies of mitragynine. In the present study, mitragynine was found to be fairly stable during storage and sample preparation. The present study showed for the first time the detailed pharmacokinetic profiles of mitragynine. Following intravenous administration, mitragynine demonstrated a biphasic elimination from plasma. Oral absorption of the drug was slow, prolonged and was incomplete, with a calculated absolute oral bioavailability value of 3.03%. The variations observed in previous pharmacokinetic studies after oral administration of mitragynine could be attributed to its poor bioavailability rather than to the differences in assay method, metabolic saturation or mitragynine dose.     

Square-like Functions Generated by a Composite Wavelet Transform

The classical square functions play important role in Harmonic Analysis and have a very direct connection with L ₂-estimates and Littlewood-Paley theory. In this paper we introduce a new variant of square-like functions generated by some composite wavelet transform. We establish Calderón-type reproducing formula and then prove L ₂-boundedness of newly defined square-like functions.     

An ALE method for simulations of axisymmetric elastic surfaces in flow

The dynamics of membranes, shells, and capsules in fluid flow has become an active research area in computational physics and computational biology. The small thickness of these elastic materials enables their efficient approximation as a hypersurface, which exhibits an elastic response to in-plane stretching and out-of-plane bending, possibly accompanied by a surface tension force. In this work, we present a novel arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian (ALE) method to simulate such elastic surfaces immersed in Navier-Stokes fluids. The method combines high accuracy with computational efficiency, since the grid is matched to the elastic surface and can, therefore, be resolved with relatively few grid points. The focus of this work is on axisymmetric shapes and flow conditions, which are present in a wide range of biophysical problems. We formulate axisymmetric elastic surface forces and propose a discretization with surface finite-differences coupled to evolving finite elements. We further develop an implicit coupling strategy to reduce time step restrictions. We show in several numerical test cases that accurate results can be achieved at computational times on the order of minutes on a single core CPU. We demonstrate two state-of-the-art applications which to our knowledge cannot be simulated with any other numerical method so far: we present first simulations of the observed shape oscillations of novel microswimming shells and the uniaxial compression of the cortex of a biological cell during an AFM experiment.     

Mixed ligand transition metal complexes of tertiary phosphines and 5-phenyl-l,3,4-oxadiazole-2-thione

Transition metal complexes containing two types of ligands: 5-phenyl-1,3,4-oxadiazole-2-thione ion (L) and tertiary phosphines, have been prepared. The complexes, [ML₂A₂] [M = Pd or Pt; A = PPh₃ or Ph₂PCH₂CH₂P(O)Ph₂] and [ML₂B] (M = Co, Ni, Pd or Pt; B = Ph₂PCH₂PPh₂ or Ph₂PCH₂CH₂PPh₂), were characterized by elemental analysis, molar conductance, i.r., u.v.–vis., ³¹P-n.m.r., magnetic susceptibility measurements and mass spectra.     

Modeling reactive blending: An experimental approach

We present an experimental study of polymer–polymer reaction kinetics at the interfaces between two immiscible polymer phases under flow in a batch mixer of type Haake Rheocord. To that end, we have developed a model chemical system that is composed of a mixture of polystyrene (PS) and poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). A small fraction of PS bear hydroxyl terminal group (PS-OH) and that of PMMA contain nonclassical isocyanate moieties that are randomly distributed along the PMMA chains (PMMA-r-NCO). This reactive system is particularly pertinent to modeling practical reactive blending processes because the amount and rate of copolymer formation can be determined with great accuracy (on the order of ppm). This study shows that the overall reaction rate is controlled primarily by interfacial generation through convective mixing. Most reaction and morphological development are accomplished within a very short period of time (1–3 min). For a PS/PMMA (60/40) reactive blend, the ultimate size of the PMMA particles is as small as 0.2 μm and is reached within 2 to 3 min. A surface coverage of about 0.5 of the PMMA particles by a monolayer of the copolymer is enough to prevent dynamic coalescence, whereas a much higher surface coverage is needed to eliminate static coalescence. In the nonentangled regime (M_n of the PS-OH = 7800 g/mol), temperature has a significant effect on the reaction rate, while it has little effect in the entangled regime (M_n of the PS-OH = 53,200 g/mol). © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J. Polym. Sci. B Polym. Phys. 36: 2153–2163, 1998     

Vapor pressure measurements in the range 10 Pa to 1 Pa of four pentaerythritol esters: Density and vapor–liquid equilibria modeling of ester lubricants

Vapor pressures of four pure pentaerythritol esters, PE, pentaerythritol tetrapentanoate, pentaerythritol tetraheptanoate, pentaerythritol tetranonanoate and pentaerythritol tetra 2-ethylhexanoate were measured between 334 and 476 K in a recently developed gas saturation apparatus. The experimental vapor pressure values for the four polyolesters range from 5.6 × 10⁻⁵ Pa to 0.94 Pa. These data together with density values were used to determined SAFT and PC-SAFT characteristic parameters. The linearity of molecular parameters for both models with the molecular weight permits to interpolate and extrapolate these parameters for pentaerythritol ester with linear chains. For pentaerythritol esters with ethyl-alkanoic chains, the parameters of SAFT and PC-SAFT have been estimated assuming that the slope of these straight lines is the same for PEs with linear chains that for PE with branched chains. This procedure was used to predict density of commercial POEs, estimating the molecular weight when it is not available from the viscosity at 313.15 K. PC-SAFT gives better performances than SAFT to predict density data for these four compounds at high pressures and for other PEs at atmospheric pressure. Furthermore, characteristic parameters for Soave-Redlich-Kwong and Peng Robinson EoSs were also estimated from the experimental vapor pressures and literature density values.