In South Asian countries, the major cause of oral cancer is reported to be chewing paan, which is comprised of betel leaf daubed with slaked lime paste and areca nut. To investigate how paan may contribute to the onset of cancer, the authors treated two immortalized cell lines with extracts of betel leaf, areca nut, and lime and evaluated how these treatments affected cell proliferation and cell death. Initial results indicate that while betel leaf alone may inhibit cell growth, areca nut promoted cancer cell survival and proliferation, even when co-treated with betel leaf. These data suggest that areca nut could exacerbate the progression of oral cancer in humans.
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Green Tea Extract as an Environmentally Friendly Antibacterial Agent Against Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato on Plants
Plant pathogens can cause significant crop loss each year, but controlling them with bactericides or antibiotics can be costly and may be harmful to the environment. Green tea naturally contains polyphenols, which have been shown to have some antimicrobial properties. In this study, the authors show that green tea extract can inhibit growth of the plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato and may be useful as an alternative bactericide for crops.
Read More...Building a video classifier to improve the accuracy of depth-aware frame interpolation
In this study, the authors share their work on improving the frame rate of videos to reduce data sent to users with both 2D and 3D footage. This work helps improve the experience for both types of footage!
Read More...Rhizosphere metagenome analysis and wet-lab approach to derive optimal strategy for lead remediation in situ
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reports a significant number of heavy metal-contaminated sites across the United States. To address this public health concern, rhizoremediation using microbes has emerged as a promising solution. Here, a combination of soil microbes were inoculated in the rhizosphere in soil contaminated with 500 parts per million (ppm) of lead. Results showed rhizoremediation is an effective bioremediation strategy and may increase crop productivity by converting nonarable lands into arable lands.
Read More...Protein concentrations in cows’ milk during the four stages of lactation
In this article, the authors quantify fluctuations of primary proteins found within bovine milk across four stages of lactation. Critically, these findings bear great relevance to the nutritional support of calves as well as the varying severity of symptoms of lactose intolerance.
Read More...Preliminary investigation of Allosauroidea facial integument and the evolution of theropod facial armor
The facial integument, or external skin tissues, were assessed on set of dinosaurs from the Allosauroidea clade to test whether dermal patterns served specific functions.
Read More...A natural language processing approach to skill identification in the job market
The authors looked at using machine learning to identify skills needed to apply for certain jobs, specifically looking at different techniques to parse apart the text. They found that Bidirectional Encoder Representation of Transforms (BERT) performed best.
Read More...A comparison study in the expansion of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells
In this study, the effects of different sources of serum on growing mesenchymal stem cells are compared with the goal of identifying one more suitable for clinical use.
Read More...Mutation of the Catalytic Cysteine in Anopheles gambiae Transglutaminase 3 (AgTG3) Abolishes Plugin Crosslinking Activity without Disrupting Protein Folding Properties
Malaria is a major public health issue, especially in developing countries, and vector control is a major facet of malaria eradication efforts. Recently, sterile insect technique (SIT), or the release of sterile mosquitoes into the wild, has shown significant promise as a method of keeping vector populations under control. In this study, the authors investigate the Anopheles gambiae transglutaminase 3 protein (AgT3), which is essential to the mating of the Anopheles mosquito. They show that an active site mutation is able to abolish the activity of the AgT3 enzyme and propose it as a potential target for chemosterilant inhibitors.
Read More...Optical anisotropy of crystallized vanillin thin film: the science behind the art
Microscopic beauty is hiding in common kitchen ingredients - even vanillin flavoring can be turned into mesmerizing artwork by crystallizing the vanillin and examining it under a polarizing microscope. Wang and Pang explore this hidden beauty by determining the optimal conditions to grow crystalline vanillin films and by creating computer simulations of chemical interactions between vanillin molecules.
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