In Vitro and in Vivo Cytotoxic Effects of Chlorella Against Various types of Cancer

Chlorella is one of the microalgae that had been studied intensively owing to its rapid growth and easily cultured at a large scale compared to other microalgae and valuable nutrient compositions. Numerous studies have observed that Chlorella possess various health benefit including antioxidant, anti-cholesterol, anti-inflammatory, and antiproliferative effect against many types of cancer. In this review paper, the effects of various Chlorella species against cancer cells and animal induced cancer are discussed and an overview on Chlorella is briefed. The Chlorella deleterious effect on cancer through various mechanisms such as enhancement of immune system and apoptosis; improving lipid peroxidation; synthesis and expression of the protein-degrading matrix; and preventing the formation of new blood vessels are elaborated as well. Based on the findings of many studies reported in this article, it can be suggested that Chlorella has the potential in supporting cancer therapy and may develop to become an anti-cancer agent

The stellar and sub-stellar IMF of simple and composite populations

The current knowledge on the stellar IMF is documented. It appears to become top-heavy when the star-formation rate density surpasses about 0.1Msun/(yr pc^3) on a pc scale and it may become increasingly bottom-heavy with increasing metallicity and in increasingly massive early-type galaxies. It declines quite steeply below about 0.07Msun with brown dwarfs (BDs) and very low mass stars having their own IMF. The most massive star of mass mmax formed in an embedded cluster with stellar mass Mecl correlates strongly with Mecl being a result of gravitation-driven but resource-limited growth and fragmentation induced starvation. There is no convincing evidence whatsoever that massive stars do form in isolation. Various methods of discretising a stellar population are introduced: optimal sampling leads to a mass distribution that perfectly represents the exact form of the desired IMF and the mmax-to-Mecl relation, while random sampling results in statistical variations of the shape of the IMF. The observed mmax-to-Mecl correlation and the small spread of IMF power-law indices together suggest that optimally sampling the IMF may be the more realistic description of star formation than random sampling from a universal IMF with a constant upper mass limit. Composite populations on galaxy scales, which are formed from many pc scale star formation events, need to be described by the integrated galactic IMF. This IGIMF varies systematically from top-light to top-heavy in dependence of galaxy type and star formation rate, with dramatic implications for theories of galaxy formation and evolution.Comment: 167 pages, 37 figures, 3 tables, published in Stellar Systems and Galactic Structure, Vol.5, Springer. This revised version is consistent with the published version and includes additional references and minor additions to the text as well as a recomputed Table 1. ISBN 978-90-481-8817-

Asteroseismology and Interferometry

Asteroseismology provides us with a unique opportunity to improve our understanding of stellar structure and evolution. Recent developments, including the first systematic studies of solar-like pulsators, have boosted the impact of this field of research within Astrophysics and have led to a significant increase in the size of the research community. In the present paper we start by reviewing the basic observational and theoretical properties of classical and solar-like pulsators and present results from some of the most recent and outstanding studies of these stars. We centre our review on those classes of pulsators for which interferometric studies are expected to provide a significant input. We discuss current limitations to asteroseismic studies, including difficulties in mode identification and in the accurate determination of global parameters of pulsating stars, and, after a brief review of those aspects of interferometry that are most relevant in this context, anticipate how interferometric observations may contribute to overcome these limitations. Moreover, we present results of recent pilot studies of pulsating stars involving both asteroseismic and interferometric constraints and look into the future, summarizing ongoing efforts concerning the development of future instruments and satellite missions which are expected to have an impact in this field of research.Comment: Version as published in The Astronomy and Astrophysics Review, Volume 14, Issue 3-4, pp. 217-36

In Vitro and in Vivo Cytotoxic Effects of Chlorella Against Various types of Cancer

Chlorella is one of the microalgae that had been studied intensively owing to its rapid growth and easily cultured at a large scale compared to other microalgae and valuable nutrient compositions. Numerous studies have observed that Chlorella possess various health benefit including antioxidant, anti-cholesterol, anti-inflammatory, and antiproliferative effect against many types of cancer. In this review paper, the effects of various Chlorella species against cancer cells and animal induced cancer are discussed and an overview on Chlorella is briefed. The Chlorella deleterious effect on cancer through various mechanisms such as enhancement of immune system and apoptosis; improving lipid peroxidation; synthesis and expression of the protein-degrading matrix; and preventing the formation of new blood vessels are elaborated as well. Based on the findings of many studies reported in this article, it can be suggested that Chlorella has the potential in supporting cancer therapy and may develop to become an anti-cancer agent.</jats:p

Medicinal Properties Screening of Mallotus paniculatus Extract

Introduction: Traditionally, Mallotus paniculatus (Balik Angin) plant is used in the treatment of various diseases in rural areas such as remedy after childbirth, wound healing and fever. In this present study, four medicinal properties of the plant were investigated which included antibacterial, antifungal, anticancer and antioxidant activities. Materials and Methods: Potential medicinal compounds were extracted from the plant leaves by sonication with 3 different solvents namely ethanol, ethyl acetate and hexane respectively. The antibacterial and antifungal properties were determined using disc diffusion agar and broth dilution assay, the antioxidant activity by DPPH scavenging assay and the anticancer effect by MTT assay. Results: From the screening of the medicinal properties, M. paniculatus leave extracts were shown to possess antibacterial, antioxidant and anticancer properties but not antifungal properties. Ethanolic and ethyl acetate extracts of the leave were active against gram positive bacteria (Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus subtilis) but not gram negative bacteria (Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Escherichia coli). The antioxidant activity of the ethanolic crude extract was high; with IC50 of 30 μg/ml comparable with the positive controls; ascorbic acid and butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT). Both ethanolic and ethyl acetate extracts were cytotoxic against breast cancer (MCF7), colon cancer (HT-29), cervix cancer (Hela) cell lines. Conclusion: M. paniculatus leave extract has many potential medicinal values for further studies.</jats:p

EEG-based Hypo-vigilance detection using convolutional neural network

National audienceHypo-vigilance detection is becoming an important active research areas in the biomedical signal processing field. For this purpose, electroencephalogram (EEG) is one of the most common modalities in drowsiness and awakeness detection. In this context, we propose a new EEG classification method for detecting fatigue state. Our method makes use of a and awakeness detection. In this context, we propose a new EEG classification method for detecting fatigue state. Our method makes use of a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architecture. We define an experimental protocol using the Emotiv EPOC+ headset. After that, we evaluate our proposed method on a recorded and annotated dataset. The reported results demonstrate high detection accuracy (93%) and indicate that the proposed method is an efficient alternative for hypo-vigilance detection as compared with other methods