Natural Small Molecules in Gastrointestinal Tract and Associated Cancers: Molecular Insights and Targeted Therapies

Gastric cancer is one of the most common cancers of the gastrointestinal tract. Although surgery is the primary treatment, serious maladies that dissipate to other parts of the body may require chemotherapy. As there is no effective procedure to treat stomach cancer, natural small molecules are a current focus of research interest for the development of better therapeutics. Chemotherapy is usually used as a last resort for people with advanced stomach cancer. Anti-colon cancer chemotherapy has become increasingly effective due to drug resistance and sensitivity across a wide spectrum of drugs. Naturally-occurring substances have been widely acknowledged as an important project for discovering innovative medications, and many therapeutic pharmaceuticals are made from natural small molecules. Although the beneficial effects of natural products are as yet unknown, emerging data suggest that several natural small molecules could suppress the progression of stomach cancer. Therefore, the underlying mechanism of natural small molecules for pathways that are directly involved in the pathogenesis of cancerous diseases is reviewed in this article. Chemotherapy and molecularly-targeted drugs can provide hope to colon cancer patients. New discoveries could help in the fight against cancer, and future stomach cancer therapies will probably include molecularly formulated drugs.     

Effect of counterions on the activity of lipase in cationic water-in-oil microemulsions

This paper delineates how the different counterions affect the physicochemical properties of the aqueous aggregates and thereby the lipase activities at the interface of cationic water-in-oil microemulsions. To this end, we have synthesized a series of cetyltrimethylammonium-based surfactants, 1-14, having aliphatic, aliphatic with aromatic substitution at the alpha position, and aromatic carboxylate anion as the counterion. The physicochemical characterizations of these aqueous aggregates were done by conductometric, tensiometric, fluorometric techniques to determine counterion binding (beta), critical micelle concentration (cmc), and micropolarity at the microenvironment. It has been found that the activity of lipase mainly increases with hydrophobicity (which is directly proportional to the counterion binding (beta) of the surfactant) of the counterion and reaches a maximum when the beta value is around 0.5. Increase in hydrophobicity as well as beta leads to the attachment of more counterions at interface resulting in enhancement of interfacial area. Consequently, the enzyme may attain flexible secondary conformation at the augmented surface area and also allow larger population of substrates and enzyme molecules at the interface leading to the enhancement in lipase activity. After an optimum value of beta, further increase probably produces a steric crowding at the interface, hindering the smooth occupancy of enzyme and the substrate in this region leading to decrease of enzyme activity, while molecular surface area of the counterion did not show any virtual influence on the lipase activity. Thus, the variation in the counterion structure and hydrophobicity plays a crucial role in modulating the lipase activity.     

Role of hadronic dynamics in proton decay

Aspects of hadronic dynamics which play a crucial role in proton decay (exclusive and inclusive) are examined in the context of a comprehensive Bethe-Salpeter (BS) formalism forq \(\bar q\) andqqq systems, under harmonic confinement. The BS model which is characterized by two basic parameters—the universal spring constant \(\tilde \omega \) GeV and the quark massm _q =0.28 GeV, has already provided an impressive set of agreements in respect of a large number and variety of hadronic observables (mass spectra, and an extensive list of e.m. and pionic couplings of both mesons and baryons). TheSU(5) GUT parameters, on the other hand, are kept fixed at the ‘standard’ values, (see e.g. Langacker's review). The absolute normalization of the baryon, which is rather crucial in this case, is fixed with reference to the (topologically equivalent) process of its ‘dissociation’ into three quarks by a hard photon, which makes use of the structure function sum rule \(\int\limits_0^1 {dxF_2^p (x)/x = \sum {Q_i^2 } } \) , instead of the usual BS normalization (which amounts to the conservation of charge). Thee ⁺ inclusive rate, which is about three times that of thee ⁺π⁰ mode, works out at0.54×10 ^?33 yr ^?1 which is smaller than most contemporary calculations by two orders of magnitude. Other exclusive modes are also consistent with the above estimate. The theoretical implications of these results vis a vis contemporary calculations as well as current experimental searches are discussed.     

Determination of lectin in very dilute solution with umbelliferyl sugars by fluorescence quenching

Umbelliferyl sugars have been used to determine the lectin concentration in very dilute solution by fluorescence quenching methods. The Stern-Volmer plot of fluorescence quenching after considering ground-state complexation is obeyed by several sugars. As little as 1 μg of lectin (in 10 μl) and 250 nM of umbelliferyl sugars can be determined. This method offers a simple, non-destructive and rapid method for the determination of lectin activity.     

Charge-extraction technique for studying the surface states in MOSdevices

A method called the charge-extraction technique is proposed for studying the surface states in MOS devices. This new technique utilizes the substrate current arising from the non-steady-state emission of carries from the surface states instead of that arising from their steady-state recombination, as utilized in the charge-pumping method. This is achieved by confining the amplitude of the gate-voltage signal to such a magnitude that the surface region of the device does not cross the depletion limits. A new theoretical model is developed for the present case which predicts the occurrence of a maximum value of the substrate current at a certain optimum frequency of the applied gate-voltage signal. Experimental measurements have been found quite in conformity with the theoretical model. It is found that the maximum substrate current and the corresponding optimum frequency, obtained in this way, can serve as more handy and precise parameters for the determination of the surface states     

On some properties of the bathtub failure rate family of life distributions

In this paper, some of the basic issues concerning the bathtub failure rate (BFR) life distributions, thus far unresolved, have been investigated. Specifically, exponential bounds have been obtained for the survival function as well as the moments of a BFR distribution. Closure properties of the BFR family under the formation of coherent systems, convolutions and mixtures have been dealt with. Closure of the BFR class under the formation of limits in distribution and the equivalence of weak convergence and convergence of moment sequences have been established.     

Power transfer characteristics of a microwave reverberation chamber

Power transfer through a microwave reverberation chamber is studied theoretically and experimentally. Two configurations are employed as follows. In the first, the chamber contains a transmitting antenna and a receiving antenna; in the second, it contains a transmitting antenna and a receiving D-dot sensor. For each configuration a theoretical model is derived and laboratory measurements are carried out for the power gain of the chamber as a function of frequency. The models prove useful in predicting the observed variation of gain with frequency, and they provide insight into the importance of power flow to the chamber walls and to the receiving antenna/sensor     

Mass transfer enhancement by longitudinal vortices

From numerical and experimental investigations it has been recently established that convective heat transfer can be dramatically enhanced by the generation of longitudinal vortices in the flow. The phenomenological similarity between heat and mass transfer suggests that longitudinal vortices should increase also mass transfer. The mixing between two parallel streams of two components in a rectangular channel with and without a pair of rectangular winglets as vortex generators has been numerically investigated. The results show that one pair of vortex generators can increase the global mixing by more than 50 for laminar flow. This global mixing has been defined as the sum of the square of the differences of concentrations.     

Spectroscopic studies on nanodispersions of CdS, HgS, their core-shells and composites prepared in micellar medium

CdS is a large band gap material compared to HgS. Both are interesting from academic and technological points of view. The nanodispersions (colloids) of CdS and HgS as well their core-shell products and composites (co-colloids) were prepared by varied modes of precursor addition in micellar solution of cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB). The prepared dispersions were studied by spectroscopic and electron microscopic techniques.     

Image-adaptive vector quantization in an entropy-constrainedframework

An adaptive vector quantization (VQ) scheme with codebook transmission is derived for the variable-rate source coding of image data using an entropy-constrained Lagrangian framework. Starting from an arbitrary initial codebook C(I) available to both the encoder and decoder, the proposed algorithm iteratively generates an improved operational codebook C(0) that is well adapted to the statistics of a particular image or subimage. Unlike other approaches, the rate-distortion trade-offs associated with the transmission of updated code vectors to the decoder are explicitly considered in the design. In all cases, the algorithm guarantees that the operational codebook C(0) will have rate-distortion performance (including all side-information) better than or equal to that of any initial codebook C(I). When coding the Barbara image, improvement at all rates is demonstrated with observed gains of up to 3 dB in peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR). Whereas in general the algorithm is multipass in nature, encoding complexity can be mitigated without an exorbitant rate-distortion penalty by restricting the total number of iterations. Experiments are provided that demonstrate substantial rate-distortion improvement can be achieved with just a single pass of the algorithm.