Thinking through Transition is the first concentrated effort to explore the most recent chapter of East Central European past from the perspective of intellectual history. Post-socialism can be ...understood as a period of scarcity and preponderance of ideas, the dramatic eclipsing of the dissident legacy (as well as the older political traditions), and the rise of technocratic and post-political governance. This book, grounded in empirical research sensitive to local contexts, proposes instead a history of adaptations, entanglements, and unintended consequences. In order to enable and invite comparison, the volume is structured around major domains of political thought, some of them generic (liberalism, conservatism, the Left), others (populism and politics of history) deemed typical for post-socialism. However, as shown by the authors, the generic often turns out to be heavily dependent on its immediate setting, and the typical resonates with processes that are anything but vernacular.
Consistent formulations of relativistic viscous hydrodynamics involve short-lived modes, leading to asymptotic rather than convergent gradient expansions. In this Letter we consider the ...Müller-Israel-Stewart theory applied to a longitudinally expanding quark-gluon plasma system and identify hydrodynamics as a universal attractor without invoking the gradient expansion. We give strong evidence for the existence of this attractor and then show that it can be recovered from the divergent gradient expansion by Borel summation. This requires careful accounting for the short-lived modes which leads to an intricate mathematical structure known from the theory of resurgence.
Milk thistle (
) is a medicinal plant that has been used for thousands of years as a remedy for a variety of ailments. The main component of
fruit extract (silymarin) is a flavonolignan called ...silybin, which is not only the major silymarin element but is also the most active ingredient of this extract, which has been confirmed in various studies. This compound belongs to the flavonoid group known as flavonolignans. Silybin's structure consists in two main units. The first is based on a taxifolin, the second a phenyllpropanoid unit, which in this case is conyferil alcohol. These two units are linked together into one structure by an oxeran ring. Since the 1970s, silybin has been regarded in official medicine as a substance with hepatoprotective properties. There is a large body of research that demonstrates silybin's many other healthy properties, but there are still a lack of papers focused on its molecular structure, chemistry, metabolism, and novel form of administration. Therefore, the aim of this paper is a literature review presenting and systematizing our knowledge of the silybin molecule, with particular emphasis on its structure, chemistry, bioavailability, and metabolism.
Low‐molecular‐weight self‐assembled peptides may serve as promising hydrogelators for drug delivery applications by changing their structural network in response to external stimuli. Herein, inspired ...by the well‐studied low‐molecular‐weight peptide hydrogelator, fluorenyl‐methoxycarbonyl‐diphenylalanine (Fmoc‐FF), a novel peptide is designed and synthesized to include an ultraviolet (UV)‐sensitive phototrigger. Similar to Fmoc‐FF, 6‐nitroveratryloxycarbonyl‐diphenylalanine (Nvoc‐FF) self‐assembles to form a 3D, self‐supporting, nanofibrous hydrogel. The Nvoc‐FF hydrogel exhibits good mechanical properties with a storage modulus of 40 kPa. UV irradiation of the Nvoc‐FF hydrogel encapsulating insulin‐fluorescein isothiocyanate (insulin‐FITC) results in the cleavage of Nvoc‐FF peptide to produce unmasked FF, thereby facilitating the degradation of the hydrogel and the release of insulin‐FITC. This release is in linear correlation to the irradiation time. In the present study, a first insight into this rigid, fibrous, light‐responsive hydrogel is provided, allowing the fabrication of a novel drug delivery system for controlled release of large molecules.
A photo‐responsive peptide‐based hydrogel is designed and synthesized for drug delivery applications. 6‐Nitroveratryloxycarbonyl‐diphenylalanine (Nvoc‐FF), which self‐assembles into a rigid fibrous hydrogel, fully disassembles upon UV light irradiation in a duration‐dependent manner. Nvoc‐FF efficiently encapsulates insulin‐fluorescein isothiocyanate, which allows it to serve as a suitable vehicle for effective delivery of large active molecules.
In the field of noncovalent interactions a new paradigm has recently become popular. It stems from the analysis of molecular electrostatic potentials and introduces a label, which has recently ...attracted enormous attention. The label is σ-hole, and it was first used in connection with halogens. It initiated a renaissance of interest in halogenated compounds, and later on, when found also on other groups of atoms (chalcogens, pnicogens, tetrels and aerogens), it resulted in a new direction of research of intermolecular interactions. In this review, we summarize advances from about the last 10 years in understanding those interactions related to σ-hole. We pay particular attention to theoretical and computational techniques, which play a crucial role in the field.
The lipophilic positively charged moiety of triphenylphosphonium (TPP+) has been used to target a range of biologically active compounds including antioxidants, spin-traps and other probes into ...mitochondria. The moiety itself, while often considered biologically inert, appears to influence mitochondrial metabolism.
We used the Seahorse XF flux analyzer to measure the effect of a range of alkylTPP+ on cellular respiration and further analyzed their effect on mitochondrial membrane potential and the activity of respiratory complexes. We found that the ability of alkylTPP+ to inhibit the respiratory chain and decrease the mitochondrial membrane potential increases with the length of the alkyl chain suggesting that hydrophobicity is an important determinant of toxicity.
More hydrophobic TPP+ derivatives can be expected to have a negative impact on mitochondrial membrane potential and respiratory chain activity in addition to the effect of the biologically active moiety attached to them. Using shorter linker chains or adding hydrophilic functional groups may provide a means to decrease this negative effect.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
The success of relativistic hydrodynamics as an essential part of the phenomenological description of heavy-ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC has motivated a significant body of theoretical work ...concerning its fundamental aspects. Our review presents these developments from the perspective of the underlying microscopic physics, using the language of quantum field theory, relativistic kinetic theory, and holography. We discuss the gradient expansion, the phenomenon of hydrodynamization, as well as several models of hydrodynamic evolution equations, highlighting the interplay between collective long-lived and transient modes in relativistic matter. Our aim to provide a unified presentation of this vast subject-which is naturally expressed in diverse mathematical languages-has also led us to include several new results on the large-order behaviour of the hydrodynamic gradient expansion.
Ubiquitous facial recognition technology can expose individuals' political orientation, as faces of liberals and conservatives consistently differ. A facial recognition algorithm was applied to ...naturalistic images of 1,085,795 individuals to predict their political orientation by comparing their similarity to faces of liberal and conservative others. Political orientation was correctly classified in 72% of liberal-conservative face pairs, remarkably better than chance (50%), human accuracy (55%), or one afforded by a 100-item personality questionnaire (66%). Accuracy was similar across countries (the U.S., Canada, and the UK), environments (Facebook and dating websites), and when comparing faces across samples. Accuracy remained high (69%) even when controlling for age, gender, and ethnicity. Given the widespread use of facial recognition, our findings have critical implications for the protection of privacy and civil liberties.
The gut microbiota shows a wide inter-individual variation, but its within-individual variation is relatively stable over time. A functional core microbiome, provided by abundant bacterial taxa, ...seems to be common to various human hosts regardless of their gender, geographic location, and age. With advancing chronological age, the gut microbiota becomes more diverse and variable. However, when measures of biological age are used with adjustment for chronological age, overall richness decreases, while a certain group of bacteria associated with frailty increases. This highlights the importance of considering biological or functional measures of aging. Studies using model organisms indicate that age-related gut dysbiosis may contribute to unhealthy aging and reduced longevity. The gut microbiome depends on the host nutrient signaling pathways for its beneficial effects on host health and lifespan, and gut dysbiosis disrupting the interdependence may diminish the beneficial effects or even have reverse effects. Gut dysbiosis can trigger the innate immune response and chronic low-grade inflammation, leading to many age-related degenerative pathologies and unhealthy aging. The gut microbiota communicates with the host through various biomolecules, nutrient signaling-independent pathways, and epigenetic mechanisms. Disturbance of these communications by age-related gut dysbiosis can affect the host health and lifespan. This may explain the impact of the gut microbiome on health and aging.
Recognition of the environmental role of photoheterotrophic bacteria has been one of the main themes of aquatic microbiology over the last 15 years. Aside from cyanobacteria and ...proteorhodopsin-containing bacteria, aerobic anoxygenic phototrophic (AAP) bacteria are the third most numerous group of phototrophic prokaryotes in the ocean. This functional group represents a diverse assembly of species which taxonomically belong to various subgroups of Alpha-, Beta- and Gammaproteobacteria. AAP bacteria are facultative photoheterotrophs which use bacteriochlorophyll-containing reaction centers to harvest light energy. The light-derived energy increases their bacterial growth efficiency, which provides a competitive advantage over heterotrophic species. Thanks to their enzymatic machinery AAP bacteria are active, rapidly growing organisms which contribute significantly to the recycling of organic matter. This chapter summarizes the current knowledge of the ecology of AAP bacteria in aquatic environments, implying their specific role in the microbial loop.
The review covers current knowledge about the distribution and diversity of aerobic anoxygenic phototrophs in aquatic environments and their role in the aquatic food webs and the microbial loop.
PDF
