Cytoprotective Mechanisms of DJ-1: Implications in Cardiac Pathophysiology

DJ-1 was originally identified as an oncogene product while mutations of the gene encoding DJ-1/PARK7 were later associated with a recessive form of Parkinson’s disease. Its ubiquitous expression and diversity of function suggest that DJ-1 is also involved in mechanisms outside the central nervous system. In the last decade, the contribution of DJ-1 to the protection from ischemia-reperfusion injury has been recognized and its involvement in the pathophysiology of cardiovascular disease is attracting increasing attention. This review describes the current and gaps in our knowledge of DJ-1, focusing on its role in regulating cardiovascular function. In parallel, we present original data showing an association between increased DJ-1 expression and antiapoptotic and anti-inflammatory markers following cardiac and vascular surgical procedures. Future studies should address DJ-1’s role as a plausible novel therapeutic target for cardiovascular disease.     

Development of Analytical Strategies for the Determination of Olive Fruit Bioactive Compounds Using UPLC-HRMS and HPLC-DAD. Chemical Characterization of Kolovi Lesvos Variety as a Case Study

In this study, an overall survey regarding the determination of several bioactive compounds in olive fruit is presented. Two methodologies were developed, one UPLC-Q-TOF-MS method for the determination of olive fruit phenolic compounds and one HPLC-DAD methodology targeting the determination of pigments (chlorophylls and carotenoids), tocopherols (α-, β, -γ, δ-) and squalene. Target and suspect screening workflows were developed for the thorough fingerprinting of the phenolic fraction of olives. Both methods were validated, presenting excellent performance characteristics, and can be used as reliable tools for the monitoring of bioactive compounds in olive fruit samples. The developed methodologies were utilized to chemical characterize the fruits of the Kolovi olive variety, originating from the island of Lesvos, North Aegean Region, Greece. Twenty-five phenolic compounds were identified and quantified in Kolovi olives with verbascoside, hydroxytyrosol, oleacein and oleomissional found in significantly high concentrations. Moreover, 12 new bioactive compounds were identified in the samples using an in-house suspect database. The results of pigments analysis suggested that Kolovi variety should be characterized as low pigmentation, while the tocopherol and squalene content was relatively high compared to other olive varieties. The characterization of Kolovi olive bioactive content highlighted the high nutritional and possible economic value of the Kolovi olive fruit.     

Optimization of Vacuum-Microwave-Assisted Extraction of Natural Polyphenols and Flavonoids from Raw Solid Waste of the Orange Juice Producing Industry at Industrial Scale

Orange pomace (OP) is a solid waste produced in bulk as a byproduct of the orange juice industry and accounts for approximately 50% of the quantity of the fruits processed into juice. In numerous literature references there is information about diverse uses of orange pomace for the production of high-added-value products including production of natural antioxidant and antimicrobial extracts rich in polyphenols and flavonoids which can substitute the hazardous chemical antioxidants/antimicrobials used in agro-food and cosmetics sectors. In this work and for the first time, according to our knowledge, the eco-friendly aqueous vacuum microwave assisted extraction of orange pomace was investigated and optimized at real industrial scale in order to produce aqueous antioxidant/antimicrobial extracts. A Response Surface Optimization methodology with a multipoint historical data experimental design was employed to obtain the optimal values of the process parameters in order to achieve the maximum rates of extraction of OP total polyphenols and/or total flavonoids for economically optimum production at industrial scale. The three factors used for the optimization were: (a) microwave power (b) water to raw pomace ratio and (c) extraction time. Moreover, the effectiveness and statistical soundness of the derived cubic polynomial predictive models were verified by ANOVA.     

Porous and Water Stable 2D Hybrid Metal Halide with Broad Light Emission and Selective H2O Vapor Sorption

In this work we report a strategy for generating porosity in hybrid metal halide materials using molecular cages that serve as both structure-directing agents and counter-cations. Reaction of the [2.2.2] cryptand (DHS) linker with Pb^II in acidic media gave rise to the first porous and water-stable 2D metal halide semiconductor (DHS)₂Pb₅Br₁₄. The corresponding material is stable in water for a year, while gas and vapor-sorption studies revealed that it can selectively and reversibly adsorb H₂O and D₂O at room temperature (RT). Solid-state NMR measurements and DFT calculations verified the incorporation of H₂O and D₂O in the organic linker cavities and shed light on their molecular configuration. In addition to porosity, the material exhibits broad light emission centered at 617 nm with a full width at half-maximum (FWHM) of 284 nm (0.96 eV). The recorded water stability is unparalleled for hybrid metal halide and perovskite materials, while the generation of porosity opens new pathways towards unexplored applications (e.g. solid-state batteries) for this class of hybrid semiconductors.     

Finiteness conditions in the stable module category

We study groups whose cohomology functors commute with filtered colimits in high dimensions. We relate this condition to the existence of projective resolutions which exhibit some finiteness properties in high dimensions, and to the existence of Eilenberg–Mac Lane spaces with finitely many n-cells for all sufficiently large n. To that end, we determine the structure of completely finitary Gorenstein projective modules over group rings. The methods are inspired by representation theory and make use of the stable module category, in which morphisms are defined through complete cohomology. In order to carry out these methods, we need to restrict ourselves to certain classes of hierarchically decomposable groups.     

A Convergence Analysis of Newton-Like Method for Singular Equations Using Recurrent Functions

We provide new semilocal convergence results for Newton-like method involving outer or generalized inverses in a Banach space setting. Using our new idea of recurrent functions and the same or weaker conditions than before [5-19 A. Ben-Israel and N.E. Greville ( 1974 ). Generalized Inverses: Theory and Applications, Pure and Applied Mathematics . Wiley-Interscience , New York . X. Chen and T. Yamamoto ( 1989 ). Convergence domains of certain iterative methods for solving nonlinear equations . Numer. Funct. Anal. Optimiz. 10 : 37 – 48 . J.E. Dennis , Jr. ( 1968 ). On Newton-like methods . Numer. Math. 11 : 324 – 330 . P. Deuflhard and C. Heindl ( 1979 ). Convergence theorems for Newton's method and extensions to related methods . SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 16 : 1 – 10 . J.M. Gutiérrez ( 1997 ). A new semilocal convergence theorem for Newton's method . J. Comp. Appl. Math. 79 : 131 – 145 . J.M. Gutiérrez , M.A. Hernández , and M.A. Salanova ( 1995 ). Accessibility of solutions by Newton's method . Internat. J. Comput. Math. 57 : 239 – 247 . W.M. Häubler ( 1986 ). A Kantorovich-type convergence analysis for the Gauss–Newton methods . Numer. Math. 48 : 119 – 125 . L.V. Kantorovich and G.P. Akilov ( 1964 ). Functional Analysis . Pergamon Press , Oxford . M.Z. Nashed and X. Chen ( 1993 ). Convergence of Newton-like methods for singular operator equations using outer inverses . Numer. Math. 66 : 235 – 257 . F.A. Potra and V. Ptàk ( 1980 ). Sharp error bounds for Newton's process . Numer. Math. 34 : 67 – 72 . W.C. Rheinboldt ( 1968 ). A unified convergence theory for a class of iterative processes . SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 5 : 42 – 63 . W.C. Rheinboldt ( 1977 ). An adaptive continuation process for solving systems of nonlinear equations . Polish Academy of Sciences, Banach Ctr. Publ. 3 : 129 – 142 . T. Yamamoto ( 1987 ). A method for finding sharp error bounds for Newton's method under the Kantorovich assumptions . Numer. Math. 49 : 203 – 230 . T. Yamamoto ( 1987 ). A convergence theorem for Newton-like methods in Banach spaces . Numer. Math. 51 : 545 – 557 . T. Yamamoto ( 1989 ). Uniqueness of the solution in a Kantorovich-type theorem of Haubler for the Gauss–Newton method . Japan J. Appl. Math. 6 : 77 – 81 . ], we provide more precise information on the location of the solution and finer bounds on the distances involved. Moreover, since our Newton–Kantorovich-type hypothesis is weaker than before, we can now cover cases not previously possible.

Applications and numerical examples involving a nonlinear integral equation of Chandrasekhar-type and a differential equation with Green's function are also provided in this study.     

Linear orderings and powers of characterizable cardinals

We say that a countable model M completely characterizes an infinite cardinal κ, if the Scott sentence of M has a model in cardinality κ, but no models in cardinality κ⁺. If a structure M completely characterizes κ, κ is called characterizable. In this paper, we concern ourselves with cardinals that are characterizable by linearly ordered structures (cf. Definition 2.1).Under the assumption of GCH, Malitz completely resolved the problem by showing that κ is characterizable if and only if κ=ℵ_α, for some α<ω₁ (cf. Malitz (1968) [7] and Baumgartner (1974) [1]). Our results concern the case where GCH fails.From Hjorth (2002) [3], we can deduce that if κ is characterizable, then κ⁺ is characterizable by a densely ordered structure (see Theorem 2.4 and Corollary 2.5).We show that if κ is homogeneously characterizable (cf. Definition 2.2), then κ is characterizable by a densely ordered structure, while the converse fails (Theorem 2.3).The main theorems are (1) If κ>2^λ is a characterizable cardinal, λ is characterizable by a densely ordered structure and λ is the least cardinal such that κ^λ>κ, then κ^λ is also characterizable (Theorem 5.4) and (2) if ℵ_α and κ^ℵ_α are characterizable cardinals, then the same is true for κ^ℵ_α+β, for all countable β (Theorem 5.5).Combining these two theorems we get that if κ>2^ℵ_α is a characterizable cardinal, ℵ_α is characterizable by a densely ordered structure and ℵ_α is the least cardinal such that κ^ℵ_α>κ, then for all β<α+ω₁, κ^ℵ_β is characterizable (Theorem 5.7). Also if κ is a characterizable cardinal, then κ^ℵ_α is characterizable, for all countable α (Corollary 5.6). This answers a question of the author in Souldatos (submitted for publication) [8].