Preparation and characterization of lyophilised egg PC liposomes incorporating curcumin and evaluation of its activity against colorectal cancer cell lines

Curcumin has been associated with the treatment of various diseases in traditional medicine, among them cancer. The major problems that prevent its approval as therapeutic agent are its low water solubility and its relatively low in vivo bioavailability. Liposomes are considered as effective drug carriers because of their ability to solubilize hydrophobic compounds and to alter their pharmacokinetic properties. The purpose of this study was the development of lyophilised liposomal curcumin fully characterized in terms of its physical properties [(zeta-potential, size, size distribution and Polydispercity index (PI)], and to evaluate its in vitro cytotoxic against colorectal cancer cell lines in a short-term and in a long-term (clonogenic) assay. Curcumin was incorporated in egg-phosphatidylcholine (EPC) liposomes at a drug to lipid molar ratio 1:14 achieving high incorporation efficiency close to 85%. The liposomal curcumin was lyophilized preserving thus its stability. The reconstitution of the formulation resulted in the original liposomal suspension. The release in FBS showed a plateau near 14% at 96 hours of incubation. The in vitro studies against colorectal cancer cell lines have shown that liposomes improve the activity of curcumin especially in the long-term assay and the liposomal formulation found to be more potent against HCT116 and HCT15, cell lines which express the MDR phenotype. EPC liposomal curcumin in a molar ratio of curcumin/EPC 1:14 has shown improved cytotoxic activity versus free curcumin against colorectal cancer cell lines. In vivo studies based on the recent findings are in progress in our laboratory.     

Natural convection near 4°C in a water saturated porous layer heated from below

This paper reports a numerical study of two-dimensional natural convection in a horizontal porous layer heated from below and saturated with cold water. The density maximum of water at 3.98°C and atmospheric pressure occurs inside the layer, as the top surface is maintained at 0°C and the bottom surface is varied from 4 to 8°C. Three separate series of numerical simulations document the effect of Rayleigh number, bottom surface temperature, and horizontal length of the porous layer on the overall heat transfer rate vertically through the layer. The range of these numerical experiments is 200 < Ra_p < 10000, 0.167 < H/L < 1 and °C < T_H < 8°C, where Ra_p, H/L and T_H are the Darcy-modified Rayleigh number for a fluid with density maximum, the geometric ratio height/length, and the bottom wall temperature. The numerical results agree with published linear stability results regarding the onset of convection.     

Correlated Donor/Acceptor Crystal Orientation Controls Photocurrent Generation in All‐Polymer Solar Cells

New polymers with high electron mobilities have spurred research in organic solar cells using polymeric rather than fullerene acceptors due to their potential of increased diversity, stability, and scalability. However, all‐polymer solar cells have struggled to keep up with the steadily increasing power conversion efficiency of polymer:fullerene cells. The lack of knowledge about the dominant recombination process as well as the missing concluding picture on the role of the semi‐crystalline microstructure of conjugated polymers in the free charge carrier generation process impede a systematic optimization of all‐polymer solar cells. These issues are examined by combining structural and photo‐physical characterization on a series of poly(3‐hexylthiophene) (donor) and P(NDI2OD‐T2) (acceptor) blend devices. These experiments reveal that geminate recombination is the major loss channel for photo‐excited charge carriers. Advanced X‐ray and electron‐based studies reveal the effect of chloronaphthalene co‐solvent in reducing domain size, altering domain purity, and reorienting the acceptor polymer crystals to be coincident with those of the donor. This reorientation correlates well with the increased photocurrent from these devices. Thus, efficient split‐up of geminate pairs at polymer/polymer interfaces may necessitate correlated donor/acceptor crystal orientation, which represents an additional requirement compared to the isotropic fullerene acceptors.     

A Methodology for Speeding up MVM for Regular,Toeplitz and Bisymmetric Toeplitz Matrices

The Matrix Vector Multiplication algorithm is an important kernel in most varied domains and application areas and the performance of its implementations highly depends on the memory utilization and data locality. In this paper, a new methodology for MVM including different types of matrices, i.e. Regular, Toeplitz and Bisymmetric Toeplitz, is presented in detail. This methodology achieves higher execution speed than the software state of the art library, ATLAS (speedup from 1.2 up to 4.4), and other conventional software implementations, for both general (SIMD unit is used) and embedded processors. This is achieved by fully and simultaneously exploiting the combination of software and hardware parameters as one problem and not separately.     

Novel phase inversion process for symmetric membrane formation through thermal quenching of polymer solution in same solvent

A new and useful form of phase inversion for the formation of porous polymeric membranes is presented herein. As in the case of thermally induced phase separation (TIPS), this new form involves only two components (polymer and solvent) and a thermal quench; here the quench is accomplished via immersion in a cold bath of the micromolecular component (solvent) of the dope. Ιn terms of a fixed‐pressure two‐component phase diagram the quench is a non‐vertical one. We will refer to the new method as cold‐solvent induced phase separation (CIPS). In the present work we study mainly the poly(ethylene‐co‐vinyl alcohol)/1,3‐propanediol system which leads to bi‐continuous structures stemming from a combination of liquid‐liquid demixing and crystallization. In addition, we compare with the case of the Nylon‐l2/formic acid system that we have briefly considered before and study further herein; the consequences of the TIPS to CIPS shift of method are different for the two systems, and the two situations are representative of two general possibilities. We also report general properties such as porosity, tensile strength, water permeation flux, and crystallinity of the produced poly(ethylene‐co‐vinyl alcohol) membranes. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 42282.     

Real-time remote monitoring: the DuraMote platform and experiments towards future,advanced, large-scale SCADA systems

The economic and social prosperity of our society depends much on the proper functioning of structures and civil infrastructure systems. Structural health monitoring has been long recognised as a vital tool to preclude and/or mitigate degradation effects and failures of structural systems. Along this line, the DuraMote platform is presented in this paper (named after Durable and Mote) together with real-life applications, laboratory and field experiments, which promote the effort to expand the existing concept of structural monitoring into remote, real-time, continuous and permanent performance monitoring of spatially extended systems. Successful implementation of this technology can improve the resilience and sustainability of large-scale complex infrastructure systems and lead to future, advanced Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition methodology that could be routinely used in a variety of structures and networks.     

Behavior of Escherichia coli O157:H7 during the manufacture and ripening of feta and telemes cheeses

Pasteurized whole ewe's and cow's milk was used in the manufacture of Feta end Telemes cheeses, respectively, according to standard procedures. In both cases, the milk had been inoculated with Escherichia coli O157:H7 at a concentration of ca. 5.1 log CFU/ml and with thermophilic or mesophilic starter cultures at a concentration of ca. 5.3 to 5.6 log CFU/ml. In the first 10 h of cheesemaking, the pathogen increased by 1.18 and 0.82 log CFU/g in Feta cheese and by 1.56 and 1.35 log CFU/ g in Telemes cheese for the trials with thermophilic and mesophilic starters, respectively. After 24 h of fermentation, a decrease in E. coli O157:H7 was observed for all trials. At that time, the pH was reduced to 4.81 to 5.10 for all trials. Fresh cheeses were salted and held at 16 degrees C for ripening until the pH was reduced to 4.60. Cheeses were then moved into storage at 4 degrees C to complete ripening. During ripening, the E. coli O157:H7 population decreased significantly (P < or = 0.001) and finally was not detectable in Feta cheese after 44 and 36 days and in Telemes cheese after 40 and 30 days for the trials with thermophilic and mesophilic starters, respectively. The estimated times required for one decimal reduction of the population of E. coli O157:H7 after the first day of processing were 9.71 and 9.26 days for Feta cheese and 9.09 and 7.69 days for Telemes cheese for the trials with thermophilic and mesophilic starters, respectively.     

Microstructure and mechanical properties of zirconia stabilized with increasing Y2O3, for use in dental restorations

The present in vitro study aims at characterizing dental zirconia ceramics, which are stabilized with a high amount of Y₂O₃. Two groups of specimens were fabricated by computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing technique. The specimens of each group were divided into two subgroups (SGs): SGs 1a and 2a contained a relatively low amount of Y₂O₃ (6–8 wt.%), whereas SGs 1b and 2b contained a higher amount of Y₂O₃ (8–10 wt.%). The influence of yttria content on their microstructure and mechanical properties was experimentally determined. The statistical significance of the differences in the mechanical properties between the SGs was evaluated by the t-test (p < 5% was considered statistically significant). Homogeneous and dense ceramics with fine nanostructure, comprising grains of yttria-stabilized tetragonal and cubic zirconia, sized between ∼160 and ∼800 nm, were produced. The increase of yttria content, which causes an increase in grain size, favors the formation of cubic zirconia, resulting in mechanical properties’ slight reduction; yet, the differences were not statistically significant. Consequently, the mechanical properties (HV 11.74–12.91 GPa, and K_IC 2.66–4.25 MPa m^0.5) and the good esthetics of the investigated zirconia ceramics stabilized with high yttria content qualify these zirconia materials for fabricating dental restorations, because they can approach the properties and the esthetics of dental hard tissues as well as the tooth structure.     

Detection of changes in the cellular composition of Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium in the presence of antimicrobial compound(s) of Lactobacillus strains using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy

It was previously established that Lactobacillus fermentum ACA-DC 179, Lactobacillus plantarum ACA-DC 287 and Lactobacillus plantarum ACA-DC 2350 exhibit antimicrobial activity against Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium. In order to further investigate the killing effect of these microorganisms against Salmonella cells, we employed Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). Salmonella cells were incubated with different concentrated lactobacilli supernatants and their FT-IR spectra were recorded. The second derivative transformation of the original spectra revealed changes in spectral regions corresponding to absorptions of major cellular constituents (e.g. cell wall, cell membrane, and proteins of the cell) among the Salmonella cells treated with the supernatants and those treated with the control samples. Principal component analysis of the second derivative transformed spectra showed that the yet unidentified antimicrobial compound(s) produced by the lactobacilli tested clearly interfered with the fatty acids of the cell membrane, as well as the polysaccharides of the cell wall in Salmonella cells, pointing towards a dual killing mode. Our study shed light for the first time in the anti-Salmonella activity of the particular Lactobacillus strains.     

An autoML network traffic analyzer for cyber threat detection

International Journal of Information Security - Timely detection and effective treatment of cyber-attacks for protecting personal and sensitive data from unauthorized disclosure constitute a core...