Search results for "RESPIRATORY SYSTEM"
showing 10 items of 1829 documents
New antiasthmatic drugs from traditional medicine?
1991
Several plants are used in traditional medicine for the treatment of bronchial asthma. We are trying to identify the active compound(s) and their mode of action. For the isolation and identification of the active principles, different chromatographic methods, HPLC, MPLC, elementary analysis, UV, mass, <sup>1</sup>H- and <sup>13</sup>C-NMR spectroscopy are used. Whole plant extracts, fractionated extracts and pure compounds are tested in the following pharmacological systems: cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase pathway of arachidonic acid metabolism, bronchial obstruction of guinea pigs after inhalation of allergens, platelet-activating factor (PAF), histamine or acetylch…
Current applications and new opportunities for the use of pulsed electric fields in food science and industry
2015
ABSTRACT Several studies have demonstrated the feasibility of pulsed electric fields (PEF) for different applications in food industry. PEF technology is therefore a valuable tool that can improve functionality, extractability, and recovery of nutritionally valuable compounds as well as the bioavailability of micronutrients and components in a diverse variety of foods. Additionally, other studies have shown the potential of PEF treatments to reduce food processing contaminants and pesticides. This opens the doors to new PEF applications in the food industry. This review focused on some of the most renowned traditional and emerging PEF applications for improvement of osmotic dehydration, ext…
The potential of pulsed electric fields to reduce pesticides and toxins
2020
Abstract Several studies have demonstrated the feasibility of pulsed electric fields (PEF) for different applications in the food industry. PEF technology is a valuable tool to improve functionality, extractability, and recovery of nutritionally valuable compounds as well as bioavailability of micronutrients and components in a diverse variety of foods. Moreover, some studies have shown the potential of PEF treatments to reduce the formation of food processing contaminants, pesticides, and toxins. This opens the doors to new PEF applications in the food industry. Recently, scientists explored the possibility of removing harmful chemical, such as pesticides and toxins, from food commodity by…
Pulsed Electric Field: Fundamentals and Effects on the Structural and Techno-Functional Properties of Dairy and Plant Proteins
2022
Dairy and plant-based proteins are widely utilized in various food applications. Several techniques have been employed to improve the techno-functional properties of these proteins. Among them, pulsed electric field (PEF) technology has recently attracted considerable attention as a green technology to enhance the functional properties of food proteins. In this review, we briefly explain the fundamentals of PEF devices, their components, and pulse generation and discuss the impacts of PEF treatment on the structure of dairy and plant proteins. In addition, we cover the PEF-induced changes in the techno-functional properties of proteins (including solubility, gelling, emulsifying, and foamin…
Immunological insights into the pathogenesis of active CMV infection in non-immunosuppressed critically ill patients.
2011
Dissociation of cytomegalovirus (CMV) DNA loads between the lower respiratory tract and blood, with high levels in the former compartment and low or undetectable levels in the latter, commonly occurs during active CMV infection in critically ill patients despite the presence of high frequencies of CMV-specific IFN-γ-producing CD8+ and CD4+ T cells in blood. Data presented in this case report suggest that inter-compartmental differences in interleukin-10 (IL-10) levels may, in part, explain the pathobiology of this phenomenon. In the absence of ganciclovir treatment, a significant correlation was observed between IL-10 levels and CMV DNA loads in lower respiratory tract specimens (P = 0.016)…
Multilevel assessment of mental stress via network physiology paradigm using consumer wearable devices
2019
Mental stress is a physiological condition that has a strong negative impact on the quality of life, affecting both the physical and the mental health. For such a reason, accurate measurements of stress level can be helpful to provide mechanisms for prevention and treatment. This paper proposes a procedure for the classification of different mental stress levels by using physiological signals provided by low invasive wearable devices. 17 healthy volunteers participated in this study. Three different mental states were elicited in them: a resting condition, a stressful cognitive state, and a sustained attention task. The acquired physiological signals were: a one lead electrocardiogram (ECG)…
Extending the spectral decomposition of Granger causality to include instantaneous influences: application to the control mechanisms of heart rate va…
2021
Assessing Granger causality (GC) intended as the influence, in terms of reduction of variance of surprise, that a driver variable exerts on a given target, requires a suitable treatment of ‘instantaneous’ effects, i.e. influences due to interactions whose time scale is much faster than the time resolution of the measurements, due to unobserved confounders or insufficient sampling rate that cannot be increased because the mechanism of generation of the variable is inherently slow (e.g. the heartbeat). We exploit a recently proposed framework for the estimation of causal influences in the spectral domain and include instantaneous interactions in the modelling, thus obtaining (i) a novel index…
Inter simple sequence repeat analysis of genetic diversity and relationships in cultivated barley of Nordic and Baltic origin
2004
This study evaluates putative changes of genetic diversity and relationships of barley in the Nordic and Baltic countries that might have taken place during the last century as a result of commercial breeding. Four ISSR primers were used to analyse 227 accessions, yielding a total of 47 polymorphic loci. Shannon-Weaver diversity values for each locus ranged from 0.012 to 0.693. Overall, there were no significant changes of genetic diversity observed over time. A significant decrease of diversity was, however, observed in material from the southern parts of the Nordic and Baltic countries. In material from the northern parts no decrease of diversity was observed. The genetic diversity of six…
Does metal contamination affect clonal diversity of the parthenogenetic earthworm Dendrobaena octaedra?
2007
Clonal diversity of the parthenogenetic earthworm Dendrobaena octaedra was studied in three metal contamination gradients in Finland. Metal concentrations in soils (both total and bioavailable fractions) and in earthworm tissues were analysed at each sampling site. Allozyme electrophoresis was used to determine clonal diversity and several genetic diversity measures were used to evaluate differences between populations at metal contaminated and uncontaminated sites. Cu and Zn in the soils and in the earthworms increased with decreasing distance from the emission sources in all areas. Metal contamination appeared to affect clonal diversity of D. octaedra only slightly, since clonal diversity…
Baculoviral display of functional scFv and synthetic IgG-binding domains.
2000
Viral vectors displaying specific ligand binding moities such as scFv fragments or intact antibodies hold promise for the development of targeted gene therapy vectors. In this report we describe baculoviral vectors displaying either functional scFv fragments or the synthetic Z/ZZ IgG binding domain derived from protein A. Display on the baculovirus surface was achieved via fusion of the scFv fragment or Z/ZZ domain to the N-terminus of gp64, the major envelope protein of the Autographa californica nuclear polyhedrosis virus, AcNPV. As examples of scFv fragments we have used a murine scFv specific for the hapten 2-phenyloxazolone and a human scFv specific for carcinoembryonic antigen. In pri…