A Comprehensive Review on Therapeutic Perspectives of Phytosterols in Insulin Resistance: A Mechanistic Approach

Natural products in the form of functional foods have become increasingly popular due to their protective effects against life-threatening diseases, low risk of adverse effects, affordability, and accessibility. Plant components such as phytosterol, in particular, have drawn a lot of press recently due to a link between their consumption and a modest incidence of global problems, such as Type 2 Diabetes mellitus (T2DM), cancer, and cardiovascular disease. In the management of diet-related metabolic diseases, such as T2DM and cardiovascular disorders, these plant-based functional foods and nutritional supplements have unquestionably led the market in terms of cost-effectiveness, therapeutic efficacy, and safety. Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disorder categoriszed by high blood sugar and insulin resistance, which influence major metabolic organs, such as the liver, adipose tissue, and skeletal muscle. These chronic hyperglycemia fallouts result in decreased glucose consumption by body cells, increased fat mobilisation from fat storage cells, and protein depletion in human tissues, keeping the tissues in a state of crisis. In addition, functional foods such as phytosterols improve the body’s healing process from these crises by promoting a proper physiological metabolism and cellular activities. They are plant-derived steroid molecules having structure and function similar to cholesterol, which is found in vegetables, grains, nuts, olive oil, wood pulp, legumes, cereals, and leaves, and are abundant in nature, along with phytosterol derivatives. The most copious phytosterols seen in the human diet are sitosterol, stigmasterol, and campesterol, which can be found in free form, as fatty acid/cinnamic acid esters or as glycosides processed by pancreatic enzymes. Accumulating evidence reveals that phytosterols and diets enriched with them can control glucose and lipid metabolism, as well as insulin resistance. Despite this, few studies on the advantages of sterol control in diabetes care have been published. As a basis, the primary objective of this review is to convey extensive updated information on the possibility of managing diabetes and associated complications with sterol-rich foods in molecular aspects.     

Anomalous thermal expansion of osmium dioxide

The precision lattice parameters of osmium dioxide have been determined at different temperatures, in the temperature range 30–444 °C, using a Unicam high temperature powder camera 19 cm in diameter and CuKα radiation. The data have been used to evaluate the coefficients of thermal expansion at various temperatures by a graphical method. The ‘a’ parameter increases non-linearly with increasing temperature while the ‘c’ parameter remains constant throughout the range of temperature studied indicating a zero coefficient of expansion along the c-direction. The abnormal thermal behaviour of this compound is explained in terms of the electronic configuration of the d-shell of the cation.     

Green and Cost Effective Synthesis of Fluorescent Carbon Quantum Dots for Dopamine Detection

Carbon quantum dots (CQDs) due to its high fluorescent output is evolving as novel sensing material and is considered as future building blocks for nano sensing devices. Hence, in this investigation we report microwave assisted preparation and multi sensing application of CQDs. The microwave derived CQDs are characterized by Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) experiment and Fourier Infrared spectra (FTIR) to investigate the size distribution and chemical purity respectively. Fluorescent emission spectra recorded at varying pH shows varying fluorescence emission intensities. Further, emission spectra recorded at different temperatures shows that fluorescence emission of CQDs greatly depends on temperature. Therefore, we demonstrate the pH and temperature sensing characteristics of CQDs by fluorescence quenching behaviour. In addition, the interaction and sensing behaviour of CQDs for dopamine is also presented in this work with a detection limit of 0.2 mM. The steady state and time-resolved methods have been employed in fluorescence quenching methods for sensing dopamine through CQDs at room temperature. The bimolecular quenching rate constants for different concentration have been measured. The interaction between CQDs and dopamine indicates fluorescence quenching method is an elegant process for detecting dopamine through CQDs.     

n-Type GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure detector with a 3.2 THz threshold frequency

Terahertz detection using the free-carrier absorption requires a small internal work function of the order of a few millielectron volts. A threshold frequency of 3.2 THz (93 microm or approximately 13 meV work function) is demonstrated by using a 1 x 10(18) cm(-3) Si-doped GaAs emitter and an undoped Al(0.04)Ga(0.96)As barrier structure. The peak responsivity of 6.5 A/W, detectivity of 5.5 x 10(8) Jones, and quantum efficiency of 19% were obtained at 7.1 THz under a bias field of 0.7 kV/cm at 6 K, while the detector spectral response range spans from 3.2 to 30 THz.     

Effect of Li2O content on physical and structural properties of vanadyl doped alkali zinc borate glasses

The effect of Li₂O content in vanadyl doped 20ZnO+xLi₂O+(30−x)Na₂O+50B₂O₃ (5≤x≥25) glasses has been studied with respect to their physical and structural properties. The absence of sharp peaks in XRD spectra of these glass samples confirms the amorphous nature. The physical parameters like density, refractive index, ionic concentration and electronic polarizability vary non-linearly with x mol% depending on the diffusivities of alkali ions. EPR and optical absorption spectra reveal that the resonance signals are characteristics of VO²⁺ ions in tetragonally compressed octahedral site. Spin-Hamiltonian, crystal field, tetragonal field and bonding parameters are found to be in good agreement with the other reported glass systems. The tetragonal distortion (g_⊥-g_∥) and Dt reveals that their values vary non-linearly with Li₂O content and reaches a minimum at x=10 mol%. An anomaly of character has been observed in all the properties of vanadyl doped glass systems, which gives a clear indication of mixed alkali effect.     

A duality theorem for continuous-time linear programming problems

Summary In dealing with dynamic economic policy models one encounters optimization problems whose objective function is an integral of a linear function of a finite number of continuous variables and whose constraints are linear integral inequalities. A set of intertemporal efficiency conditions (equilibrium conditions) yielding the optimal policy are given. By approximating the continuous problem by a set of discrete problems and appealing to a well known convergence theorem in functional analysis a continuous analog of the duality theorem is proved.

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Zusammenfassung Bei der Beschäftigung mit dynamischen Modellen der ökonomischen Politik stößt man auf Optimierungsprobleme, deren Zielfunktion ein Integral einer linearen Funktion von einer endlichen Anzahl stetiger Variablen ist und deren Beschränkungen lineare Integral-Ungleichungen sind. Eine Menge intertemporaler Effizienz-Bedingungen (Gleichgewichtsbedingungen), die zur optimalen Politik führen, sind gegeben. Durch Approximation des kontinuierlichen Problems mittels einer Menge von diskreten Problemen und Berufung auf einen wohlbekannten Konvergenzsatz aus der Funktionalanalysis wird ein stetiges Analogon des Dualitätstheorems bewiesen.

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The author is indebted to Mr.Arnold Faden for helpful suggestions and to ProfessorKarl A. Fox andGerhard Tintner for encouragement during the preparation of the paper. This research has been partially supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation to the School of Business Administration administered by the Center for Research in Management Science, University of California, Berkeley.

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Vorgel. v.:G. Tintner.     

Solutions of Yang's EuclideanR-gauge equations and self-duality

Under some assumptions and transformations of variables, Yang's equations forR-gauge fields on Euclidean space lead to conformally invariant equations permitting one to obtain infinitely many other solutions from any solution of these conformally invariant equations. These conformally invariant equations closely resemble the mathematically interesting generalized Lund-Regge equations. Some exact solutions of these conformally in variant equations are obtained. Except for some singular situations, these solutions are self-dual.     

Comment on "Auditory-nerve first-spike latency and auditory absolute threshold: a computer model" [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 406-417 (2006)

A recent paper by Meddis [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 406-417 (2006)] shows that an existing model of the auditory nerve [Meddis and O'Mard, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 3787-3798 (2005)] is consistent with experimentally-measured first-spike latencies in the auditory nerve [Heil and Neubauer, J. Neurosci. 21, 7404-7415 (2001)]. The paper states that this consistency emerges because in the model, the calcium concentration inside the inner hair cell builds up over long periods of time (up to at least 200 ms) during tone presentation. It further states that integration over long time-scales happens despite the very short time constants (< 1 ms) used for the calcium dynamics. This letter demonstrates that these statements are incorrect. It is shown by simulation that calcium concentration inside the hair cell stage of the Meddis model rapidly reaches a steady state within a few milliseconds of a stimulus onset, exactly as expected from the short time-constant in the simple first-order differential equation used to model the calcium concentration. The success of the Meddis model in fitting experimental data actually confirms earlier results [Krishna, J. Comput. Neurosci. 13, 71-91 (2002a)] that show that the experimental data are a natural result of stochasticity in the synaptic events leading up to spike-generation in the auditory nerve; integration over long time scales is not necessary to model the experimental data.