The Potential of Lamiaceae Herbs for Mitigation of Overweight,Obesity, and Fatty Liver: Studies and Perspectives

Numerous plants, plant extracts, and plant-derived compounds are being explored for their beneficial effects against overweight and liver diseases. Obesity is associated with the increased prevalence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), becoming the most common liver disease in Western countries. Obesity and NAFLD are closely associated with many other metabolic alternations such as insulin resistance, diabetes mellitus, and cardiovascular diseases. Many herbs of the Lamiaceae family are widely employed as food and spices in the Mediterranean area, but also in folk medicine, and their use for the management of metabolic disorders is well documented. Hereby, we summarized the scientific results of the medicinal and nutraceutical potential of plants from the Lamiaceae family for prevention and mitigation of overweight and fatty liver. The evidence indicates that Lamiaceae plants may be a cost-effective source of nutraceuticals and/or phytochemicals to be used in the management of metabolic-related conditions such as obesity and NAFLD. PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus, and SciFinder were accessed to collect data on traditional medicinal plants, compounds derived from plants, their reported anti-obesity mechanisms, and therapeutic targets.     

Copper Binding and Oligomerization Studies of the Metal Resistance Determinant CrdA from Helicobacter pylori

Within this research, the CrdA protein from Helicobacter pylori (HpCrdA), a putative copper-binding protein important for the survival of bacterium, was biophysically characterized in a solution, and its binding affinity toward copper was experimentally determined. Incubation of HpCrdA with Cu(II) ions favors the formation of the monomeric species in the solution. The modeled HpCrdA structure shows a conserved methionine-rich region, a potential binding site for Cu(I), as in the structures of similar copper-binding proteins, CopC and PcoC, from Pseudomonas syringae and from Escherichia coli, respectively. Within the conserved amino acid motif, HpCrdA contains two additional methionines and two glutamic acid residues (MMXEMPGMXXMXEM) in comparison to CopC and PcoC but lacks the canonical Cu(II) binding site (two His) since the sequence has no His residues. The methionine-rich site is in a flexible loop and can adopt different geometries for the two copper oxidation states. It could bind copper in both oxidation states (I and II), but with different binding affinities, micromolar was found for Cu(II), and less than nanomolar is proposed for Cu(I). Considering that CrdA is a periplasmic protein involved in chaperoning copper export and delivery in the H. pylori cell and that the affinity of the interaction corresponds to a middle or strong metal–protein interaction depending on the copper oxidation state, we conclude that the interaction also occurs in vivo and is physiologically relevant for H. pylori.     

Gaussian Amplitude Amplification for Quantum Pathfinding

We study an oracle operation, along with its circuit design, which combined with the Grover diffusion operator boosts the probability of finding the minimum or maximum solutions on a weighted directed graph. We focus on the geometry of sequentially connected bipartite graphs, which naturally gives rise to solution spaces describable by Gaussian distributions. We then demonstrate how an oracle that encodes these distributions can be used to solve for the optimal path via amplitude amplification. And finally, we explore the degree to which this algorithm is capable of solving cases that are generated using randomized weights, as well as a theoretical application for solving the Traveling Salesman problem.     

Cancer-Associated Mutations of the Adenosine A2A Receptor Have Diverse Influences on Ligand Binding and Receptor Functions

The adenosine A_2A receptor (A_2AAR) is a class A G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR). It is an immune checkpoint in the tumor micro-environment and has become an emerging target for cancer treatment. In this study, we aimed to explore the effects of cancer-patient-derived A_2AAR mutations on ligand binding and receptor functions. The wild-type A_2AAR and 15 mutants identified by Genomic Data Commons (GDC) in human cancers were expressed in HEK293T cells. Firstly, we found that the binding affinity for agonist NECA was decreased in six mutants but increased for the V275A mutant. Mutations A165V and A265V decreased the binding affinity for antagonist ZM241385. Secondly, we found that the potency of NECA (EC₅₀) in an impedance-based cell-morphology assay was mostly correlated with the binding affinity for the different mutants. Moreover, S132L and H278N were found to shift the A_2AAR towards the inactive state. Importantly, we found that ZM241385 could not inhibit the activation of V275A and P285L stimulated by NECA. Taken together, the cancer-associated mutations of A_2AAR modulated ligand binding and receptor functions. This study provides fundamental insights into the structure–activity relationship of the A_2AAR and provides insights for A_2AAR-related personalized treatment in cancer.     

A Lie symmetry approach for the solution of the inverse kinematics problem

In this paper, it is considered the inverse kinematics problem, which is faced from a differential point of view. In particular, it is shown that an asymptotic inverse kinematics can be interpreted as a Lie symmetry of the direct kinematics. A parameterization of all Lie symmetries of the direct kinematics is proposed, and the classical Newton and gradient method are obtained as particular cases.     

How often do simple dynamical processes have infinitely many coexisting sinks?

This work concerns the nature of chaotic dynamical processes. Sheldon Newhouse wrote on dynamical processes (depending on a parameter )x _x+1=T(x _n ; ), wherex is in the plane, such as might arise when studying Poincaré return maps for autonomous differential equations in IR³. He proved that if the system is chaotic there will very often be existing parameter values for which there are infinitely many periodic attractors coexisting in a bounded region of the plane, and that such parameter values would be dense in some interval. The fact that infinitely many coexisting sinks can occur brings into question the very nature of the foundations of chaotic dynamical processes. We prove, for an apparently typical situation, that Newhouse's construction yields only a set of parameter values of measure zero.This research was supported in part by grants from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research AFOSR 81-0217, the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche-Comitato per le Matematiche, and the National Science Foundation DMS 84-19110On leave from: Dipartimento di Matematica G. Castel nuovo Universita di Roma La Sapienza P. le Aldo Moro 5, I-00185 Rome, Italy     

Novel PdAgCu ternary alloy as promising materials for hydrogen separation membranes: Synthesis and characterization

The use of the sequential electroless plating method allowed us to obtain the PdAgCu ternary alloy on top of dense stainless steel (SS) 316 L disks. The XRD analysis indicated that initially the nucleation of the two phases of the alloy (FCC and BCC) takes place, but the FCC/BCC ratio increases with the annealing time at 500 °C in H₂ stream. After 162 h, the film contained only the FCC phase, which presents promising properties to be applied in the synthesis of hydrogen selective membranes. SEM cross-section results showed that a dense, continuous, defect-free film was deposited on top of the SS support, and the EDS data indicated that no significant gradient was present on the thickness of the film. XPS and LEIS allowed us to determine that Cu and Ag surface segregation takes place after annealing up to 500 °C/5 days. In the top-most surface layer, Ag enrichment takes place as determined by ARXPS experiments which can be the result of the lower surface tension of Ag compared to that of Cu and Pd. Increasing the annealing temperature results in an increase of the Ag surface segregation while the Cu concentration in the top-most surface layer decreases.     

Structural and magnetic properties of pulsed laser deposited SrRuO3/CoFe2O4/La2/3Sr1/3MnO3 magnetic oxide heterostructures on SrTiO3(001) and MgO(001)

We report on the growth of all-oxide SrRuO₃/CoFe₂O₄/La_2/3Sr_1/3MnO₃ and La_2/3Sr_1/3MnO₃/CoFe₂O₄/SrRuO₃ heterostuctures on SrTiO₃(001) and MgO(001) substrates by pulsed laser deposition. Structural analyses by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy clearly indicate the preservation of epitaxial relations when the La_2/3Sr_1/3MnO₃ layer is grown first, whereas trilayers with SrRuO₃ at the bottom are more disordered. Both the substrate material and the deposition sequence strongly influence the formation of various structural defects such as interfacial dislocations and sub-grain structures, and this is clearly reflected by a reduction of the saturation magnetization in the top electrode. When the substrate material and the deposition sequence are correctly chosen, however, the magnetic moments of the La_2/3Sr_1/3MnO₃ and SrRuO₃ layers reverse independently, and the La_2/3Sr_1/3MnO₃ layer retains bulk-like magnetic properties.     

Measurement error and the Albert-Loewer problem

Modal interpretations of QM have the welcome consequence that unitarily evolved post-measurement states which superpose eigenstates of the anticipated pointer observable can represent devices registering determinate measurement outcomes. Albert and Loewer have claimed that modal interpretations cannot account for the outcomes of error-prone measurements. But Albert, Loewer, and their commentators have not always appreciated the relation of measurement error to the Albert-Loewer problem. I argue that measurement error is neither necessary nor sufficient to generate the Albert-Loewer problem, and use the Araki-Yanase theorem to show that measurements of a large class of observables, if they are error-free, are beset by the Albert-Loewer problem.