Characterization of essential oil recovered from fennel horticultural wastes

Fennel crop has been traditionally used as spice in cooking and fragrances, and in folk medicine for its spectrum of useful properties. Mediterranean is the elective natural cultivation area for this plant with Italy being a leader producer. A limit of this production is due to the high amount of wastes derived still rich of phytochemicals, which are usually underused. Hence, the extraction and characterization of essential oil from residues of fennel horticultural market was investigated to understand the potential profit of their recycling. Forty-eight compounds resulted for fennel oil waste, analysed by GC-FID-MS, with the most abundant among components was anethole. Other constituents contributing to fennel flavour were the monoterpenes limonene and nerol. The exploitation of this oil as a good source of bioactive compounds was assessed by means of its antioxidant power measured with DPPH test.     

FDTD Analysis of a Radiofrequency Knee Coil for Low-Field MRI: Sample-Induced Resistance and Decoupling Evaluation

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) using high static field (>3T) generates high-quality images, thanks to high homogeneity in transmission as well as high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in reception. On the other hand, biological effects are proportional to the magnetic field strength and moreover the diagnostic accuracy is not always linked to high-quality imaging. For these reasons, the interest in low-field imaging becomes greater, also because of cheaper setting, greater patients comfort and more safety profile. In simple cases, as for surface coil, the coil performance is evaluated using classical electromagnetic theory, but for more complex geometry and in presence of a sample, is more difficult to evaluate the solution and often is necessary to follow a trial-and-error approach. Numerical methods represent a solution to this problem. In this work, we performed numerical simulation on a two-channel knee coil for low-field (0.5 T) MRI scanner. We are interested in seeing the effect of a sample placed inside the coil on the sample-induced resistance and decoupling between channels. In particular, we observe how the position of the sample inside the channel influences the resistance value and for performing this we compared an innovative method based on the exponential fitting on voltage oscillation damping with a validated method (estimation using quality factor). Finally, for the complete coil, the scatter parameters were calculated in loaded and unloaded conditions.     

Effect of condensation phenomena on potentiometric measurements

Results of potentiometric analysis, namely those of pH measurements, depend on temperature control of the experimental setup, as it is expressed in the analytical law, the Nernst equation, starting from the primary level, where reference values are conventionally assigned to standard solutions, through the whole traceability chain, down to the service laboratory.Fundamental studies of pH standards, based on the measurement of the potential of an electrochemical cell without transference, known as Harned cell, containing a platinum-hydrogen electrode and a silver-silver chloride reference electrode, refer condensation phenomena on the portions of the cell walls which are not immersed in the thermostatic bath, as one of the major sources of error in the assessment of both the silver-silver chloride electrode standard potential and on pH values. In this work such effect, which is bound to happen due to significant temperature differences between the ambient air temperature and the water bath, has been quantified, presenting an original contribution to the improvement of the quality of potentiometric analysis results. This was possible due to the availability of a climatic cabin “WALKIN” with a temperature control of ±0.01 °C, which permitted that temperature gradients were built between the thermostat water bath (controlled to ±0.005 °C) where cells filled to about 2/3 full were immersed up to 90% of their height, and the surrounding environment.     

Distribution and occurence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in sediments from the Mar Grande and Gulf of Taranto (Ionian Sea, southern Italy)

Marine sediments from the Mar Grande and Gulf of Taranto were analysed for 17 parent PAHs, with molecular weight from 128 to 278 Daltons. The analyses were performed by gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry (GC-MS). Total PAHs content in sediments ranged from 464 to 12522 microg kg(-1) dry wt for Mar Grande and from 593 to 72275 microg kg(-1) dry wt for Gulf of Taranto. The analytical results were compared with the published results for other coastal areas in the Mediterranean Sea. PAHs levels in the Gulf of Taranto sediments were the highest in the Mediterranean sea, while PAHs concentrations in Mar Grande were higher than the ones reported in the Adriatic and Cretan Sea and with the same order of magnitude of the ones known for coastal areas of the Western and the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. PAHs concentration ratios were consistent with the main source of these compounds, in most areas, being pyrolysis. Based on the comparison of both the individual and the total PAHs concentrations with proposed sediment quality guidelines, the acute biological effects on the marine organisms were probable, especially for the Gulf of Taranto, in which almost all PAHs concentrations in sediments were higher than the guidelines limit values. The statistical analysis effected by HCA and PCA methods was used in order to classify sediment samples and to identify accumulation areas.     

Weak and strong convergence of the Ishikawa iterative process for a finite family of asymptotically nonexpansive mappings

In this paper, we introduce an Ishikawa implicit iterative process with errors for a finite family of N asymptotically nonexpansive mappings as follows:

     

Estimates of majorizing sequences in the Newton-Kantorovich method: A further improvement

Let be an operator, with X and Y Banach spaces, and f^′ be Hölder continuous with exponent θ. The convergence of the sequence of Newton-Kantorovich approximations

     

Biochemical and Molecular Study of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Carpobrotus edulis</Emphasis> Bioactive Properties and Their Effects on <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dugesia sicula</Emphasis> (Turbellaria,Tricladida) Regeneration

The traditional medicinal properties of Carpobrotus edulis are well recognized, particularly in Tunisia where it is used for wound healing. Thus, in this study, biochemical and molecular properties of its leaves’ bioactive aqueous-acetone extract were investigated. The total phenolic content (TPC) of the extract was estimated to be 184 ± 5 mg/100 g of fresh matter (FM). The qualitative and quantitative polyphenolic profile was determined by ultra performance liquid chromatography with diode array detection (UPLC-DAD) and showed that chlorogenic acid was the major compound (43.7%). The extract exhibits potent antioxidant capacities with IC50 = 56.19 and 58.91 μg/ml, as accessed via the anionic DPPH and cationic ABTS radical scavenging assays, respectively. The extract has high antibacterial properties, especially against the Gram+ Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus strains. To investigate the extract effect on regeneration, the flatworm Dugesia sicula Lepori, 1948, was used as a model. The macroscopic analysis of planarian cultures in ordinary medium containing phenolic extract at non-toxic concentrations illustrated that the extract caused morphological changes. Additionally, the molecular study through the fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) technique showed that C. edulis polyphenols can harm the stem cells’ development. These results emphasize the ecotoxicological impact of phenolic rejections in the environment on flatworms’ physiology.     

Design and synthesis of thienylpyridyl garlands as non-peptidic alpha helix mimetics and potential protein-protein interactions disruptors

This paper describes an efficient route leading to new thienylpyridyl garlands as non-peptidic alpha helix mimetics and potential protein-protein interactions disruptors. Firstly, we have studied the reactivity of boronic acids and halogenated pyridines and/or thiophenes towards the Suzuki-Miyaura cross-coupling reaction in order to obtain bis-thienylpyridines. Secondly, we have functionalized these compounds by a reaction of bromination and the resultant bis-bromothienylpyridines have been found to undergo iterative Pd-catalyzed coupling based on a pseudo-Garlanding approach with a range of pyridyl boronic acids to produce a new library of thienylpyridyl oligomers.     

Chemical Characterization and Antibiofilm Activities of Bulbs and Leaves of Two Aglione (Allium ampeloprasum var. holmense Asch. et Graebn.) Landraces Grown in Southern Italy

The present study was carried out to determine some biochemical characteristics, in particular the total polyphenol content and the free radical scavenging activity, of the extracts recovered from bulbs and aerial parts (these last often considered as by-products) of two landraces of A. ampeloprasum var. holmense cultivated in Southern Italy. For the first time, the capacity of the extracts of these landraces to inhibit the formation of biofilm of different Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria and to affect the metabolism of the cells present within the bacterial biofilm was evaluated. All extracts exhibited an amount of total polyphenols not lower than 2.86 mg/g of dried product and revealed a noteworthy antioxidant activity, with EC₅₀ values not exceeding 4.95 mg. In both cases, the aerial parts extracts were more effective than the bulb extracts, which also showed a minor amount of total polyphenols. The extracts inhibited mainly the adhesive capability of Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus, by 95.78% and 85.01%, respectively. The extracts demonstrated to inhibit also the metabolism of the bacterial cells reaching levels up to 90%. Finally, as assessed by the assays performed on the 24-h preformed biofilms, all the extracts were also capable to cause a reduction in bacterial biomass and to affect their metabolism.     

Self-focusing Multibump Standing Waves in Expanding Waveguides

Let M be a smooth k-dimensional closed submanifold of \({\mathbb{R}^N, N \geq 2}\), and let Ω _R be the open tubular neighborhood of radius 1 of the expanded manifold \({M_R := \{R_x : x \in M\}}\). For R sufficiently large we show the existence of positive multibump solutions to the problem

$ -\Delta u + \lambda u = f(u)\,{\rm in}\,\Omega_R,\quad u= 0\,{\rm on}\,\partial\Omega_R. $

The function f is superlinear and subcritical, and λ >  ?λ₁, where λ₁ is the first Dirichlet eigenvalue of ?Δ in the unit ball in \({\mathbb{R}^{N-k}}\).