, a plant native to the Indian subcontinent has a variety of biological activities. Curcumin is the most abundant and biologically active compound with many therapeutic properties. Demethoxycurcumin ...(DMC) and bisdemethoxycurcumin (BDMC) - the two other bioactive components present in
, besides curcumin, are collectively termed curcuminoids. Apart from the well-known curcumin, BDMC also has been reported to possess promising biological and pharmacological effects, but very little scientific evidence on its safety assessment has been published.
The present study was undertaken to determine the safety of pure BDMC from
extract in rodents which comprises of general toxicity (both four weeks and three months duration), reproductive/developmental toxicity and genotoxicity studies.
The Good Laboratory Practice studies were carried out in accordance with the test guidelines established by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
No treatment-related adverse findings were seen in general toxicity testing and a no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) of 1000 mg/kg/day was established after four weeks (sub-acute) and three-months (sub-chronic) dosing. Evaluation of fertility, embryo-fetal, and post-natal reproductive and developmental parameters also showed no adverse findings with a NOAEL of 1000 mg/kg/day established. The results of genotoxicity as evaluated by
reverse mutation assay, and
micronucleus test in mice indicate that BDMC did not induce any genotoxic effects.
Oral administration of BDMC is safe in rodents and non-mutagenic, with no adverse effects under experimental conditions.
Warfarin, an anticoagulant medication, is prescribed regularly despite of its bleeding tendency for the prevention and/or treatment of various thromboembolic conditions, such as deep vein thrombosis, ...and complications associated with atrial fibrillation, and myocardial infarction, but because of its narrow therapeutic window, it has a lot of interactions with drugs and diet.
Warfarin relies on regular monitoring of International Normalized Ratio which is a standardized test to measure prothrombin time and appropriate dose adjustment. Pharmacometabonomics is a novel scientific field which deals with identification and quantification of the metabolites present in the metabolome using spectroscopic techniques such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). Pharmacometabonomics helps to indicate perturbation in the levels of metabolites in the cells and tissues due to drug or ingestion of any substance. NMR is one of the most widely-used spectroscopic techniques in metabolomics because of its reproducibility and speed.
There are many factors that influence the metabolism of warfarin, making changes in drug dosage common, and clinical factors like drug-drug interactions, dietary interactions and age explain for the most part the variability in warfarin dosing. Some studies have showed that pharmacogenetic testing for warfarin dosing does not improve health outcomes, and around 26% of the variation in warfarin dose requirements remains unexplained yet.
Many recent pharmacometabonomics studies have been conducted to identify novel biomarkers of drug therapies such as paracetamol, aspirin and simvastatin. Thus, a technique such as NMR based pharmacometabonomics to find novel biomarkers in plasma and urine might be useful to predict warfarin outcome.
Wood-wool cement composite panel (WWCP) is one of wood based composite material that produced in a stable panel form and suitable to be used as building wall system to replace non-ecofriendly ...material such as brick and other masonry element. Heavy construction material such as brick requires more manpower and consume a lot of time to build the wall panel. WWCP is a lightweight material with a density range from 300 kg/m3 to 500 kg/m3 and also capable to support an imposed load from the building. This study reported on the axial compression behaviour of prefabricated reinforced wallettes constructed with wood-wool cement panel. A total of six specimens were fabricated using two layers of cross laminated WWCP bonded with normal mortar paste (Portland cement) at a mix ratio of 1:3 (cement : sand). As part of lifting mechanism, the wallettes were equipped with three steel reinforcement (T12) that embedded inside the core of wallettes. Three replicates of wallettes specimens with dimension 600 mm width and 600 mm length were fabricated without surface plaster and with 16 mm thickness of surface plaster. The wallettes were tested under axial compression load after 28 days of fabrication until failure. The result indicated that, the application of surface plaster significantly increases the loading capacity about 35 % and different orientation of the panels improve the bonding strength of the wall.
Lean manufacturing (LM) is an established process that employs an array of instruments to eradicate waste. A varietyof methods have been applied (some more successfully than others) to enhance the ...effectiveness of this process. Thisstudy delves into the introduction of the Intelligent Lean Tools Simulation (iLeTS) to overcome the deficiencies in theLM process and reduce the failure ratio. Fabricated with the use of modelling software, the performance of iLeTS wasenhanced by way of an amalgamation involving the visual basic application (VBA) and the multi agent system(MAS). This merging served to enhance the user friendliness of iLeTS, which in turn reduced the required period ofusage. Face validity and a usability study were harnessed to evaluate the performance of iLeTS. While face validitywas used to authenticate the multi-agent system flow in iLeTS; the usability study was engaged to determine the proficiencyof iLeTS when it comes to managing a number of arbitrarily occurring incidents. Subsequent to a thoroughexamination of a wide range of simulation results (deriving from authentic data), we arrived at the conclusion that (a)the iLeTS is suitable for the automation of the manufacturing process, and (b) the iLeTS can be relied upon for makingprompt and appropriate choices. KCI Citation Count: 0
The main idea of this research work is to demonstrate the benefit of the Single Minute Exchange of Die (SMED) tool in waste elimination. An initiative involving a selected textile manufacturing ...company in Malaysia and Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM) has been undertaken to support the study. Throughout this initiative, SMED was introduced to improve the time-consuming changeover process at the stamping machine of the chosen textile manufacturing company. This study was conducted based on the SMED's framework introduced by Shigeo Shingo through the process of data collection, analysis and evaluation. It involves conversion of some internal activities to external activities, usage of a jig in mold alignment as well as the creation of a new system to assist pressure settings at the stamping machine. Prior to the implementation, the initial recorded average changeover time of the stamping machine was 300 min. After implementation of SMED, the changeover time of the stamping machine had been significantly reduced to 223.15 min which represent a changeover time saving of 25.62%. In conclusion, the initiative appears to be feasible in demonstrating the benefit of SMED implementation especially in the textile manufacturing company.
The organisation is struggling to find a way to use social media effectively as it creates much interest and could offer so many things to users. Thus, many organisations have changed to use social ...media to keep up with the current trend and to stay relevant. The online community tends to be influenced by social networking tool and its interactive ability. Social media content for tourism for example can become an alternative source of information for users to plan their holiday to the preferred destinations. Facebook also acts as main user source of information because they could get direct and most recent feedback from the Facebook community. Thus, this study is conducted to determine the relevance variable related to Facebook user involvement to search for information. Relevance variables are identified using factor analysis for its validity and reliability. The analysis omitted 31 items from 61 in total after the validation and reliability test. Thus, the study found that only subjective norms, perceived behaviour control, Facebook user experience, Facebook user response, and Facebook user engagement are the remaining variables that are relevant in this research context. In addition, correlation test results indicate that there is a relationship between the subjective norms and perceived behaviour control with Facebook user experience, the Facebook user experience and Facebook user response with Facebook user engagement.
Polymer-based insulator was widely used in high voltage application. This research was carried out to study effect of different percentages of natural rubber blended with high density polyethylene ...(HDPE) polymers towards improvement of electrical breakdown and tensile strength. In this study, different percentages of natural rubber were used to blend with HDPE to form HDPE + DPNR (10%, 20%, and 30% DPNR) and HDPE + SMR 10 (10%, 20%, and 30% SMR 10) composites. The pure HDPE and composites were tested and compared for any changes and improvement in term of breakdown voltage and tensile strength. This study found that the addition of natural rubber would improve the electrical breakdown properties; with addition of 20% DPNR to HDPE gave the best results. In addition it also found that for all composites passed the minimum requirement of breakdown voltage set by standard IEC 60243 that is more than 10 kV/mm. In contrast, for the tensile strength test, the addition of natural rubber only will decrease the tensile strength of all composites compared to pure HDPE. However, all of the resulting HDPE + DPNR and HDPE + SMR 10 composites still possessed a tensile strength more than the minimum requirement set by ISO 34-1 that is 6 N/mm.
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