Earticle

Optically encoded porous silicon smart particles were successfully fabricated from the free-standing porous silicon thin films using ultrasono-method. DBR PSi was prepared by an electrochemical etch of heavily doped p++-type silicon wafer. DBR PSi was prepared by using a periodic pseudo-square wave current. The surface-modified DBR PSi was prepared by either thermal oxidation or thermal hydrosilylation. Free-standing DBR PSi films were generated by lift-off from the silicon wafer substrate using an electropolishing current. Free-standing DBR PSi films were ultrasonicated to create DBRstructured porous smart particles. Optical characteristics of porous smart particles were measured by FT-IR spectroscopy. The surface morphology of porous smart particles was determined by FE-SEM.

Caspases, a family of cysteinyl aspartate–specific proteases plays a central role in the regulation and the execution of apoptotic cell death. Activation of caspases-3 stimulates a signaling pathway that ultimately leads to the death of the cell. Hence, caspase-3 has been proven to be an effective target for reducing the amount of cellular and tissue damage. In this work, comparative molecular similarity indices analysis (CoMSIA) was performed on a series of 3,4- dihydropyrimidoindolones derivatives which are inhibitors of caspase-3. The best predictions were obtained for CoMSIA model (q 2 = 0.586, r 2 = 0.955). The predictive ability of test set (r 2 pred) was 0.723. Statistical parameters from the generated QSAR models indicated the data is well fitted and have high predictive ability. Our theoretical results could be useful to design novel and more potent caspase-3 derivatives.

C–C chemokine receptor type 4 (CCR4) is a chemokine receptor with seven transmembrane helices and it belongs to the GPCR family. It plays an important role in asthma, lung disease, atopic dermatitis, allergic bronchopulmonary aspergillosis, cancer, inflammatory bowel disease, the mosquito-borne tropical diseases, such as dengue fever and allergic rhinitis. Because of its role in wide spectrum of disease processes, CCR4 is considered to be an important drug target. Three dimensional structure of the protein is essential to determine the functions. In the present study homology modeling of human CCR4 was performed based on crystal structure of CCR5 chemokine receptor. The generated models were validated using various parameters. Among the generated homology models the best one is selected based on validation result. The model can be used for performing further docking studies to identifying the critical interacting residues.

A series of N-benzoylated ligands incorporating three different benzoyl groups 2,2’-(benzoyliminodiethylene)- 4- substituted phenols (L1,4,7), 2,2’-(4-nitrobenzoyliminodiethylene)-4-substituted phenols (L2,5,8) and 2,2’-(3,5- dinitrobenzoyliminodiethylene)-4-substituted phenols (L3,6,9) were synthesized and characterized by IR, 1H NMR, 13C NMR and mass spectroscopy. The In vitro antibacterial activity of investigated ligands were tested against human pathogenic bacteria such as four Gram (–) Enterococcus faecalis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Vibrio cholera, Vibrio harveyi and two Gram (+) Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus mutans. Furthermore, docking studies were undertaken to gain insight into the possible binding mode of these compounds with the binding site of the topoisomerase II (PDB: 4FM9) enzyme which is involved in DNA superhelicity and chromosome seggregation. The Nbenzoylated derivatives L5, 7, 8 have significant anticancer activity as Topoisomerase inhibitors. The ligands L5 and L8 were tested for their anticancer activity against human liver adenocarcinoma (HepG2) cell line with the MTT assay.

Protein kinase C theta (PKC-θ) is a serine/threonine specific protein kinase. It is largely expressed in the T- cells and CD28 signaling. PKC-θ phosphorylates diverse proteins that are involved in the various cellular signaling pathways. Activated PKC-θ in turn activates other transcription factors that control the proliferation and differentiation of T- cells. PKC-θ is considered to be an interesting therapeutic target due to its crucial role in the proliferation, differentiation and survival of T-cells. In the present study, we have performed ligand-based CoMFA study on a series of pyridylpyrazolopyridine derivatives as PKC-θ inhibitors. An acceptable CoMFA model (q2=0.544; ONC=4; r2=0.876) was developed and validated by Bootsrapping and progressive sampling. The CoMFA contour map suggested the regions to increase the activity. Bulky substitutions in R2 position of the piperizine ring could increase the activity. Similarly positive, small substitution in the R1 position of the Pyridine ring could considerably increase the activity. Our work could assist in designing more potent PKC-θ inhibitors of pyridylpyrazolopyridine derivatives.

The aim of this study was to assess the in vitro potential of methanolic seed extract of Abelmoschus esculentus as a natural antioxidant. The DPPH activity of the Ethyl acetate soluble fraction (10, 20, 40, 80, and 160 μg/mL) was increased in a dose dependent manner, which was found in the range of 18.97-90.47% as compared to ascorbic acid 26.44-93.71%. The IC50 values of Ethyl acetate soluble fraction (EAES) and ascorbicacid in DPPH radical scavenging assay were obtained to be 28.12 and 18.43 μg/mL, respectively. Measurement of polyphenol content of the EAES of A. esculentus seed was achieved using Folin-Ciocalteau reagent containing 53.80 mg/g of total phenolic content, which was found signicantly higher when compared to reference standard gallic acid. Similarly total flavonoids and proabthocyanidis of EAES and chloroform soluble fraction (CAES) were found significantly 147 mg/g and 14.24 mg/g respectively when both compared to reference standard quercetin. EAES exhibited high significant lipid peroxidation inhibition effects in a dose- dependent manner, with IC50 values of 38.08 μg/mL, whereas, standard quercetin, with IC50 value of 36.67 μg/mL. All extract/ fractions showed dose dependent reducing power ability and these differences were statistically significant (p<0.001). The results obtained in this study clearly indicate that A. esculentus seed has a signicant potential to use as a natural antioxidant agent.

Oxocane high explosives substituted to explosive group such as azide (-CH2N3), nitrate (-CH2ONO2), and hydrazine (-CH2N2H3) are investigated theoretically the acid catalyzed reaction using the semiempirical MINDO/3, MNDO and AM1 methods to use as the guidelines of high explosives. The nucleophilicity and basicity of oxocane high explosives can be explained by the value of negative charge on oxygen atom of oxocane and the reactivity in propagation step can be represented by the value of positive charge on carbon atom and low electrophile LUMO energy. It was known that carbenium ion was favorable due to the stable energy (11.745~25.461 Kcal/mol) between oxonium ion and carbenium ion in the process of cyclic oxonium ion of oxocane high explosives being converted to open carbenium ion in oxocane high explosives. The value of concentration of cyclic oxonium ion and open carbenium ion in equilibrium status was found to be a major determinant of mechanism, it was expected to react faster in the prepolymer propagation step in SN1 mechanism than in that of SN2.

In this article, we consider a singular and a degenerate elliptic operators in a divergence form. The singularities exist on a part of boundary, and comparable to the logarithmic distance function or its inverse. If we assume that the operator can be treated in a pointwise sense than distribution sense, with this operator we obtain a priori Harnack continuity near the boundary. In the proof we transform the singular elliptic operator to uniformly bounded elliptic operator with unbounded first order terms. We study this type of estimations considering a De Giorgi conjecture. In his conjecture, he proposed a certain ellipticity condition to guarantee a continuity of a solution.

We define a numerical invariant rowj(A) over Cohen-Macaulay local ring A , which is related to the presenting matrices of the j-th syzygy module (with or without free summands). We show that rowd(A) = rowCM(A) and rowd(A) = rowd(A) =rowCM(A) for a Cohen-Macaulay local ring A of dimension d.

We investigate irreducibility of the quadrinomial Fm(x) = x2m - xm+1 - xm-1 -1, where m is an even integer ≥ 2 using only basic techniques that can be often used in many classes of polynomials.