Research and application of polypropylene: a review.

Polypropylene (PP) is a versatile polymer with numerous applications that has undergone substantial changes in recent years, focusing on the demand for next-generation polymers. This article provides a comprehensive review of recent research in PP and its advanced functional applications. The chronological development and fundamentals of PP are mentioned. Notably, the incorporation of nanomaterial like graphene, MXene, nano-clay, borophane, silver nanoparticles, etc., with PP for advanced applications has been tabulated with their key features and challenges. The article also conducts a detailed analysis of advancements and research gaps within three key forms of PP: fiber, membrane, and matrix. The versatile applications of PP across sectors like biomedical, automotive, aerospace, and air/water filtration are highlighted. However, challenges such as limited UV resistance, bonding issues, and flammability are noted. The study emphasizes the promising potential of PP while addressing unresolved concerns, with the goal of guiding future research and promoting innovation in polymer applications.

Green tea and tulsi extracts as efficient green corrosion inhibitor for aluminum alloy in alkaline medium.

Corrosion is a major issue in every industrial system. As a result of its widespread application, aluminum suffers enormous annual losses due to corrosion. Scientists are continually on the lookout for effective anti-corrosion strategies. Corrosion may be reduced in a number of ways, but many of them are harmful to the environment, so it's important to find a green alternative. Corrosion inhibitors in aluminum alloys can be found in green tea and tulsi extract. In this research, we found that aluminum alloy 1100 (Al-1100) ina 10% NaOH solution was inhibited by both green tea and Tulsi extract. Samples of AL alloy are submerged in 10% NaOH solutions with and without an inhibitor for a total of 25 days. The weight-loss technique is used to determine the effectiveness of an inhibitor, with tulsi extract far outperforming green tea with the best efficiency of 83.93% compared to the greatest efficiency of 14.29% for green tea. After being submerged in an inhibitory solution, an aluminum alloy surface developed an adsorbed protective layer, which is chemical adsorption, as seen by FTIR (Fourier-Transform Infrared Spectroscopy) spectroscopy. Green inhibitors those are present on the surface of the aluminum alloys are less corrosive confirmed by the SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy) analysis. The chemical particles were found to be present as a coating over AL alloy surfaces, as determined by EDS (Energy Dispersion Spectroscopy) testing. In a10% NaOH solution, Al-1100 is inhibited more effectively by tulsi extracts than by green tea extracts.

Highly Sensitive TiO2/Au/Graphene Layer-Based Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor for Cancer Detection.

In this article, a hybrid TiO2/Au/graphene layer-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor with improved sensitivity and capability for cancer detection is presented. The finite element method (FEM) was used for numerical analysis. The proposed SPR biosensor was structured based on the angular analysis of the attenuated total reflection (ATR) method for the detection of various types of cancer using the refractive index component. The resonance angle shifted owing to the increment of normal and cancerous cells' refractive index, which varied between 1.36 and 1.401 for six different types of normal and cancerous cells. According to numerical results, the obtained sensitivities for skin (basal), cervical (HeLa), adrenal gland (PC12), blood (Jurkat), and breast (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) cancer cells were 210 deg/RIU, 245.83 deg/RIU, 264.285 deg/RIU, 285.71 deg/RIU, 292.86 deg/RIU, and 278.57 deg/RIU, respectively. Furthermore, the detection accuracy (DA), figure of merits (FOM), and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were also obtained, with values of 0.263 deg-1, 48.02 RIU-1, and 3.84, respectively. Additionally, the distribution of the electric field and the propagation of the magnetic field for resonant and non-resonant conditions of the proposed structure were illustrated. It was found that an enhanced field was exhibited on the surface of the plasmonic material for resonant conditions. We also measured the penetration depth of 180 nm using decayed electric field intensity. Furthermore, the impact of using a TiO2/Au/graphene layer was demonstrated. We further conducted analyses of the effects of the thickness of the gold layer and the effects of additional graphene layers on overall sensitivities for six different types of cancer. The proposed TiO2/Au/graphene layered structure exhibited the highest overall sensitivity in terms of detecting cancerous cells from healthy cells. Moreover, the proposed sensor was numerically analyzed for a wide range of biological solutions (refractive index 1.33-1.41), and the sensor linearity was calculated with a linear regression coefficient (R2) of 0.9858. Finally, numerical results obtained in this manuscript exhibited high sensitivity in comparison with previously reported studies.

S-allyl Cysteine Enhances Testosterone Production in Mice and Mouse Testis-Derived I-10 Cells.

Hypogonadism, associated with low levels of testosterone synthesis, has been implicated in several diseases. Recently, the quest for natural alternatives to prevent and treat hypogonadism has gained increasing research interest. To this end, the present study explored the effect of S-allyl cysteine (SAC), a characteristic organosulfur compound in aged-garlic extract, on testosterone production. SAC was administered at 50 mg/kg body weight intraperitoneally into 7-week-old BALB/c male mice in a single-dose experiment. Plasma levels of testosterone and luteinizing hormone (LH) and testis levels of proteins involved in steroidogenesis were measured by enzymatic immunoassay and Western blot, respectively. In addition, mouse testis-derived I-10 cells were also used to investigate the effect of SAC on steroidogenesis. In the animal experiment, SAC significantly elevated testosterone levels in both the plasma and the testis without changing the LH level in plasma and increased phosphorylated protein kinase A (p-PKA) levels. Similar results were also observed in I-10 cells. The findings demonstrating the increasing effect of SAC on p-PKA and mRNA levels of Cyp11a suggest that SAC increases the testosterone level by activating the PKA pathway and could be a potential target for hypogonadism therapeutics.

Resveratrol and its Related Polyphenols Contribute to the Maintenance of Genome Stability.

Genomic destabilisation is associated with the induction of mutations, including those in cancer-driver genes, and subsequent clonal evolution of cells with abrogated defence systems. Such mutations are not induced when genome stability is maintained; however, the mechanisms involved in genome stability maintenance remain elusive. Here, resveratrol (and related polyphenols) is shown to enhance genome stability in mouse embryonic fibroblasts, ultimately protecting the cells against the induction of mutations in the ARF/p53 pathway. Replication stress-associated DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) that accumulated with genomic destabilisation were effectively reduced by resveratrol treatment. In addition, resveratrol transiently stabilised the expression of histone H2AX, which is involved in DSB repair. Similar effects on the maintenance of genome stability were observed for related polyphenols. Accordingly, we propose that polyphenol consumption can contribute to the suppression of cancers that develop with genomic instability, as well as lifespan extension.

Effects of Vitamin K2 on the Expression of Genes Involved in Bile Acid Synthesis and Glucose Homeostasis in Mice with Humanized PXR.

Pregnane X receptor (PXR) is a nuclear receptor activated by various compounds, including prescribed drugs and dietary ingredients. Ligand-specific activation of PXR alters drug metabolism and affects many other physiological conditions. Species-specific ligand preference is a considerable challenge for studies of PXR function. To increase translational value of the results of mouse studies, humanized mouse model expressing human PXR (hPXR) has been developed. Menaquinone-4 (MK-4), one of vitamin K2 analogs prescribed in osteoporosis, is a PXR ligand. We hypothesized that MK-4 could modulate the physiological conditions endogenously influenced by PXR, including those that have not been yet properly elucidated. In the present study, we investigated the effects of a single oral treatment with MK-4 on hepatic gene expression in wild-type and hPXR mice by using quantitative RT-PCR and DNA microarray. MK-4 administration altered mRNA levels of genes involved in drug metabolism (Abca3, Cyp2s1, Sult1b1), bile acid synthesis (Cyp7a1, Cyp8b1), and energy homeostasis (Aldoc, Slc2a5). Similar mRNA changes of CYP7A1 and CYP8B1 were observed in human hepatocarcinoma HepG2 cells treated with MK-4. These results suggest that MK-4 may modulate bile acid synthesis. To our knowledge, this is the first report showing the effect of MK-4 in hPXR mice.

EBG Based Microstrip Patch Antenna for Brain Tumor Detection via Scattering Parameters in Microwave Imaging System.

A microwave brain imaging system model is envisaged to detect and visualize tumor inside the human brain. A compact and efficient microstrip patch antenna is used in the imaging technique to transmit equivalent signal and receive backscattering signal from the stratified human head model. Electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure is incorporated on the antenna ground plane to enhance the performance. Rectangular and circular EBG structures are proposed to investigate the antenna performance. Incorporation of circular EBG on the antenna ground plane provides an improvement of 22.77% in return loss, 5.84% in impedance bandwidth, and 16.53% in antenna gain with respect to the patch antenna with rectangular EBG. The simulation results obtained from CST are compared to those obtained from HFSS to validate the design. Specific absorption rate (SAR) of the modeled head tissue for the proposed antenna is determined. Different SAR values are compared with the established standard SAR limit to provide a safety regulation of the imaging system. A monostatic radar-based confocal microwave imaging algorithm is applied to generate the image of tumor inside a six-layer human head phantom model. S-parameter signals obtained from circular EBG loaded patch antenna in different scanning modes are utilized in the imaging algorithm to effectively produce a high-resolution image which reliably indicates the presence of tumor inside human brain.

Robustification of Naïve Bayes Classifier and Its Application for Microarray Gene Expression Data Analysis.

The naïve Bayes classifier (NBC) is one of the most popular classifiers for class prediction or pattern recognition from microarray gene expression data (MGED). However, it is very much sensitive to outliers with the classical estimates of the location and scale parameters. It is one of the most important drawbacks for gene expression data analysis by the classical NBC. The gene expression dataset is often contaminated by outliers due to several steps involved in the data generating process from hybridization of DNA samples to image analysis. Therefore, in this paper, an attempt is made to robustify the Gaussian NBC by the minimum ß-divergence method. The role of minimum ß-divergence method in this article is to produce the robust estimators for the location and scale parameters based on the training dataset and outlier detection and modification in test dataset. The performance of the proposed method depends on the tuning parameter ß. It reduces to the traditional naïve Bayes classifier when ß â†’ 0. We investigated the performance of the proposed beta naïve Bayes classifier (ß-NBC) in a comparison with some popular existing classifiers (NBC, KNN, SVM, and AdaBoost) using both simulated and real gene expression datasets. We observed that the proposed method improved the performance over the others in presence of outliers. Otherwise, it keeps almost equal performance.

Changes in biochemical characteristics and activities of ripening associated enzymes in mango fruit during the storage at different temperatures.

As a part of the study to explore the possible strategy for enhancing the shelf life of mango fruits, we investigated the changes in biochemical parameters and activities of ripening associated enzymes of Ashwina hybrid mangoes at 4-day regular intervals during storage at -10°C, 4°C, and 30 ± 1°C. Titratable acidity, vitamin C, starch content, and reducing sugar were higher at unripe state and gradually decreased with the increasing of storage time at all storage temperatures while phenol content, total soluble solid, total sugar, and nonreducing sugar contents gradually increased. The activities of amylase, α-mannosidase, α-glucosidase, and invertase increased sharply within first few days and decreased significantly in the later stage of ripening at 30 ± 1°C. Meanwhile polyphenol oxidase, ß-galactosidase, and ß-hexosaminidase predominantly increased significantly with the increasing days of storage till later stage of ripening. At -10°C and 4°C, the enzymes as well as carbohydrate contents of storage mango changed slightly up to 4 days and thereafter the enzyme became fully dormant. The results indicated that increase in storage temperature and time correlated with changes in biochemical parameters and activities of glycosidases suggested the suppression of ß-galactosidase and ß-hexosaminidase might enhance the shelf life of mango fruits.