Pharmacotherapeutic potential of walnut (Juglans spp.) in age-related neurological disorders.

Global and regional trends of population aging spotlight major public health concerns. As one of the most common adverse prognostic factors, advanced age is associated with a remarkable incidence risk of many non-communicable diseases, affecting major organ systems of the human body. Age-dependent factors and molecular processes can change the nervous system's normal function and lead to neurodegenerative disorders. Oxidative stress results from of a shift toward reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in the equilibrium between ROS generation and the antioxidant defense system. Oxidative stress and neuroinflammation caused by Amyloid-ß protein deposition in the human brain are the most likely pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Walnut extracts could reduce Amyloid-ß fibrillation and aggregation, indicating their beneficial effects on memory and cognition. Walnut can also improve movement disabilities in Parkinson's disease due to their antioxidant and neuroprotective effect by reducing ROS and nitric oxide (NO) generation and suppressing oxidative stress. It is noteworthy that Walnut compounds have potential antiproliferative effects on Glioblastoma (the most aggressive primary cerebral neoplasm). This effective therapeutic agent can stimulate apoptosis of glioma cells in response to oxidative stress, concurrent with preventing angiogenesis and migration of tumor cells, improving the quality of life and life expectancy of patients with glioblastoma. Antioxidant Phenolic compounds of the Walnut kernel could explain the significant anti-convulsion ability of Walnut to provide good prevention and treatment for epileptic seizures. Moreover, the anti-inflammatory effect of Walnut oil could be beneficial in treating multiple sclerosis. In this study, we review the pharmaceutical properties of Walnut in age-related neurological disorders.

An Energy-Efficient Evolutionary Clustering Technique for Disaster Management in IoT Networks.

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are key elements of Internet of Things (IoT) networks which provide sensing and wireless connectivity. Disaster management in smart cities is classified as a safety-critical application. Thus, it is important to ensure system availability by increasing the lifetime of WSNs. Clustering is one of the routing techniques that benefits energy efficiency in WSNs. This paper provides an evolutionary clustering and routing method which is capable of managing the energy consumption of nodes while considering the characteristics of a disaster area. The proposed method consists of two phases. First, we present a model with improved hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Harmony Search Algorithm (HSA) for cluster head (CH) selection. Second, we design a PSO-based multi-hop routing system with enhanced tree encoding and a modified data packet format. The simulation results for disaster scenarios prove the efficiency of the proposed method in comparison with the state-of-the-art approaches in terms of the overall residual energy, number of live nodes, network coverage, and the packet delivery ratio.