The Anti-Inflammatory Effects of the Methanolic Extract and Fractions from Davilla elliptica St. Hil. (Dilleniaceae) on Bothrops jararaca Envenomation

Inflammation and haemorrhage are the main characteristics of tissue injury in botropic envenomation. Although some studies have shown that anti-venom prevents systemic reactions, it is not efficient in preventing tissue injury at the site of the bite. Therefore, this work was undertaken to investigate the anti-inflammatory effects of the methanolic extract and fractions from D. elliptica and to evaluate the role of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) in this process. Effects of the extract and fractions from D. elliptica were evaluated using a carrageenan-induced paw oedema model in rats, and leukocyte rolling was visualized by intravital. The quantification of MMPs activities (MMP-2 and MMP-9) extracted from the dermis of mice treated with extract and fractions alone or incubated with venom was determined by zymographic analyses. Our results show that intraperitoneal (i.p.) injection of fractions significantly reduced paw oedema after the carrageenan challenge. Treatment with the tannins fraction also resulted in considerable inhibition of the rolling of leukocytes and this fraction was able to decrease the activation of MMP-9. These results confirmed the anti-inflammatory activity of the methanolic extract and tannins fraction of D. elliptica and showed that the dermonecrosis properties of B. jararaca venom might be mediated through the inhibition of MMP-9 activity.     

R&D,capital structure and ownership concentration: evidence from Italian microdata

The purpose of the article is to provide some evidence on the interconnection between capital structure, R&D investment and ownership concentration using a unique panel data-set of Italian firms. We study the effect of R&D intensity on leverage for two groups of firms which are different in terms of their degree of ownership concentration. Our results suggest for Public Limited Companies, a nonlinear relationship between R&D intensity and leverage, with the latter first increasing and then decreasing. Interestingly, the same result is not found to hold true for Private Limited Companies, which are characterized by a more concentrated ownership.     

Melanocyte pigmentation stiffens murine cardiac tricuspid valve leaflet

Pigmentation of murine cardiac tricuspid valve leaflet is associated with melanocyte concentration, which affects its stiffness. Owing to its biological and viscoelastic nature, estimation of the in situ stiffness measurement becomes a challenging task. Therefore, quasi-static and nanodynamic mechanical analysis of the leaflets of the mouse tricuspid valve is performed in the current work. The mechanical properties along the leaflet vary with the degree of pigmentation. Pigmented regions of the valve leaflet that contain melanocytes displayed higher storage modulus (7–10 GPa) than non-pigmented areas (2.5–4 GPa). These results suggest that the presence of melanocytes affects the viscoelastic properties of the mouse atrioventricular valves and are important for their proper functioning in the organism.     

Search based constrained test case selection using execution effort

Software testing is essential to guarantee high quality products. However, it is a very expensive activity, particularly when manually performed. One way to cut down costs is by reducing the input test suites, which are usually large in order to fully satisfy the test goals. Yet, since large test suites usually contain redundancies (i.e., two or more test cases (TC) covering the same requirement/piece of code), it is possible to reduce them in order to respect time/people constraints without severely compromising coverage. In this light, we formulated the TC selection problem as a constrained search based optimization task, using requirements coverage as the fitness function to be maximized (quality of the resultant suite), and the execution effort (time) of the selected TCs as a constraint in the search process. Our work is based on the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, which is simple and efficient when compared to other widespread search techniques. Despite that, besides our previous works, we did not find any other proposals using PSO for TC selection, neither we found solutions treating this task as a constrained optimization problem. We implemented a Binary Constrained PSO (BCPSO) for functional TC selection, and two hybrid algorithms integrating BCPSO with local search mechanisms, in order to refine the solutions provided by BCPSO. These algorithms were evaluated using two different real-world test suites of functional TCs related to the mobile devices domain. In the performed experiments, the BCPSO obtained promising results for the optimization tasks considered. Also, the hybrid algorithms obtained statistically better results than the individual search techniques.     

GIUSEPPE PAGANO: A Rationalist caught between Theories and Practices of Fascist Italy

The architecture of a modern building is viewed and defined as a whole: the so-called decorative detail does not exist, only the intelligent and strictly controlled technical detail. The aesthetic basis—both social and technical at the same time—of modern architecture is reproduced in the three-dimensional composition.¹     

Influence of Pressure and Temperature on the Velocity of a Turbulent Jet Flow 3D

To investigate the influence of pressure and temperature on the jet velocity of a three-dimensional flow was the main goal of this study. Using a precipitation chamber with approximate capacity of 600 mL, it was studied the thermodynamic behavior of supercritical carbon dioxide mixture, dichloromethane and grape seed extract via SAS （supercritical antisolvent process）. For the numerical solution, the Navier-Stokes equations were used along with the model of turbulence k-ε and Peng-Robinson equation of state with quadratic mixing rules of Van der Waals. The method of Chung was employed to determine the viscosity, thermal conductivity and mass diffusivity of the flow numerically solved through commercial code based on CFD （computational fluid dynamics）. Simulations for pressures between 80 bar and 160 bar and temperatures between 308.15 K and 318.15 K showed large variations in the jet velocity, an important property in the dynamic mixing process that involves the size, size distribution and particle morphology.     

Recovery of Components from Shrimp (Xiphopenaeus kroyeri) Processing Waste by Enzymatic Hydrolysis

ABSTRACT:  Industrial shrimp waste is a good source of protein, chitin, and carotenoids. In general, this waste is discarded with no attempt to use it, thus contributing to environmental pollution. This study was aimed at recovering the 3 main components of industrial shrimp waste, protein, chitin, and astaxanthin, using enzymatic treatment with Alcalase and pancreatin. An increase in the degree of hydrolysis (DH) from 6% to 12% resulted in 26% to 28% protein recovery. Alcalase was more efficient than pancreatin, increasing the recovery of protein from 57.5% to 64.6% and of astaxanthin from 4.7 to 5.7 mg astaxanthin/100 g of dry waste, at a DH of 12%. The enzymatic hydrolysis of the industrial waste from Xiphopenaeus kroyeri shrimp using Alcalase allowed for 65% protein recovery in the form of hydrolysates, in addition to providing suitable conditions for the recovery of astaxanthin and chitin.     

Effect of the mimic structure on the molecular recognition properties of molecularly imprinted polymers for ochratoxin A prepared by a fragmental approach

In this work the fragmental approach was used to prepare several molecularly imprinted ethylene dimethacrylate-co-methacrylic acid polymers with molecular recognition towards the mycotoxin ochratoxin A, with the aim of searching for simpler mimic templates than the well-known N-(4-chloro-1-hydroxy-2-naphthoylamido)-(l)-phenylalanine. The screening for binding of two different kinds of ochratoxin-related molecules was performed by HPLC analysis. Ochratoxin A and the mimic templates were eluted in acetonitrile–acetic acid (0.1% v/v) and the imprinting factor was measured for all the ligands on all the columns packed with the imprinted polymers. The experimental results show that changes to the amino acidic sub-structure or the presence/absence of a chlorine atom in position 4 on the naphthalene ring system does not affect the molecular recognition of ochratoxin A by the resulting imprinted polymer. On the contrary, the presence of the bulky naphthalene ring system in the mimic template seems to be necessary to preserve the molecular recognition of ochratoxin. This binding behavior was found to be compatible with in silico simulations of the complexation between some of the mimic templates and molecules of methacrylic acid. The use of the mimic template N-(1-hydroxy-2-naphthoylamido)-(L)-phenylalanine seems to represent a synthetically simple approach to the preparation of imprinted polymers with molecular recognition properties towards ochratoxin A.