Vanillin attenuates thioacetamide-induced renal assault by direct and indirect mediation of the TGFß, ERK and Smad signalling pathways in rats.

Inflammation and fibrosis are two pathological features of chronic kidney disease (CKD). Renal fibrosis is considered to be one of the most important conditions, as it may be the result of excessive extracellular matrix protein production and deposition, or prolonged exposure to nephrotoxic substances or drugs. Unfortunately, no suitable therapies or medications are currently available to prevent renal fibrosis. We conducted this study for the evaluation of the protective potential of vanillin by reversing TAA (250 mg/kg TAA for 6 weeks) induced renal injury in rats. The concentrations of the proteins tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFα), interleukin-6 (IL-6), extracellular signal regulated kinase 1/2 (Erk1/2), and transforming growth factor beta-1 (TGF-ß1) in kidney tissues were assessed using ELISA. Kidney Injury Molecule-1 (KIM-1) and mothers against decapentaplegic homologue 2, 3 (SMAD 2, 3) expressions were evaluated using real time PCR. We also estimated the expression of α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) using immunohistochemistry. Treatment with vanillin (100 mg/kg) significantly ameliorated kidney Injury and improved the kidney function. Vanillin treatment also significantly decreased the malondialdehyde (MDA) content, and elevated glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and catalase (CAT) activities in kidney tissues. Vanillin also reduced α-SMA renal expression and TNFα, IL-6, TGF-ß1, and Erk1/2 renal levels. Vanillin significantly decreased the expression of the genes encoding KIM-1 and SMAD 2, 3 and ameliorated histological abnormalities in kidney architecture. Our molecular docking findings showed that vanillin has a good binding mode inside TGF-ß type I receptors (ALK5) biding site.

Iris recognition approach for identity verification with DWT and multiclass SVM.

The iris has been proven to be one of the most stable and accurate biometrics. It has been widely used in recognition systems to determine the identity of the individual who attempts to access secured or restricted areas (e.g., airports, ATM, datacenters). An iris recognition (IR) technique for identity authentication/verification is proposed in this research. Iris image pre-processing, which includes iris segmentation, normalization, and enhancement, is followed by feature extraction, and matching. First, the iris image is segmented using the Hough Transform technique. The Daugman's rubber sheet model is the used to normalize the segmented iris area. Then, using enhancing techniques (such as histogram equalization), Gabor wavelets and Discrete Wavelets Transform should be used to precisely extract the prominent characteristics. A multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM) is used to assess the similarity of the images. The suggested method is evaluated using the IITD iris dataset, which is one of the most often used iris datasets. The benefit of the suggested method is that it reduces the number of features in each image to only 88. Experiments revealed that the proposed method was capable of collecting a moderate quantity of useful features and outperformed other methods. Furthermore, the proposed method's recognition accuracy was found to be 98.92% on tested data.

Passive immunization against inhibin increases testicular blood flow in male goats.

The present study investigated whether or not passive immunization against inhibin modulates testicular blood flow in goats. Male Shiba goats were injected with either 10 ml of inhibin antiserum (INH group; n = 5) or 10 ml of normal castrated goat serum (NGS group; n = 4). Concentrations of FSH, LH, testosterone (T), and estradiol (E2) in the plasma were measured by radioimmunoassay. Blood flow within the supratesticular (STA) and marginal testicular arteries (MTA) were measured by color pulsed-Doppler ultrasonography, and Doppler indices (resistive index; RI and pulsatility index; PI) were recorded. Results revealed significant increases in concentrations of FSH and E2 in the INH group compared to those in the NGS group (P < 0.05). Animals in the INH group had greater (P < 0.05) FSH concentrations than those in the NGS group in the period between 60 h and 144 h after treatment than at any other time. Estradiol concentrations were greater (P < 0.05) in the INH group than in the NGS group at 6 h (12.15 ± 2.09 pg/ml vs 5.49 ± 1.17 pg/mL), 12 h (8.27 ± 1.29 pg/mL vs 3.05 ± 0.38 pg/mL), and 36 h (9.35 ± 1.31 pg/mL vs 5.09 ± 0.46 pg/mL) after treatment than at any other time. Concentrations of LH and T did not significantly change between the two groups. Goats in the INH group had lesser (P < 0.05) RI of the STA than those in the NGS group and RI values were lesser at 24 h (0.37 ± 0.031 vs 0.49 ± 0.004) and 120 h (0.38 ± 0.028 vs 0.55 ± 0.048) after treatment than at any other time. Furthermore, values of RI and PI of the MTA were significantly lesser (P < 0.05) in the INH group compared to those in the control group at 48 h (RI of MTA: 0.21 ± 0.014 vs 0.37 ± 0.039; PI of MTA: 0.24 ± 0.016 vs 0.46 ± 0.058) after treatment than at any other time. In conclusion, passive immunization against inhibin has a stimulatory effect on testicular blood flow in goats by inducing decreases in the RI values of the STA and MTA.

Photocatalytic degradation of phenol in natural seawater using visible light active carbon modified (CM)-n-TiO2 nanoparticles under UV light and natural sunlight illuminations.

The photocatalytic degradation of phenol in seawater was investigated under UV and natural sunlight using visible light active carbon modified (CM)-n-TiO2 nanoparticles, synthesized via a sol-gel method. Carbon modification of n-TiO2 was performed using titanium butoxide, carbon-containing precursor, as a source of both carbon and titanium. For comparison, unmodified n-TiO2 was also synthesized by hydrolysis and oxidation of titanium trichloride in the absence of any carbon source. The presence of carbon in CM-n-TiO2 nanoparticles was confirmed by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) analysis. Carbon modification was found to be responsible for lowering the bandgap energy from 3.14eV for n-TiO2 to 1.86eV for CM-n-TiO2 which in turn enhanced the photocatalytic activity of CM-n-TiO2 towards the degradation of phenol in seawater under illumination of UV light as well as natural sunlight. This enhanced photoresponse of CM-n-TiO2 is in agreement with the UV-Vis spectroscopic results that showed higher absorption of light in both UV and visible regions. The effects of catalyst dose, initial concentration of phenol, and pH were studied. The highest degradation rate was obtained at pH 3 and catalyst dose of 1.0gL(-1). The data photocatalytic degradation of phenol in seawater using CM-n-TiO2 were successfully fitted to Langmuir-Hinshelwood model, and can be described by pseudo-first order kinetics.