Most of our knowledge is limited to their cholesterol-lowering influence and protective effect against cardiovascular disease. However, the world of plant sterols is significantly wider if we consider the thousands of publications released over the past 10 years.In this work, the use of a calibration satellite (L2-CalSat) flying in formation with a Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization mission in an orbit located at the second Lagrange point, is proposed. The new generation of CMB telescopes are expected to reach unprecedented levels of sensitivity to allow a very precise measurement of the B-mode of polarization, the curl-like polarization component expected from gravitational waves coming from Starobinski inflationary models. Due to the CMB polarized signal weakness, the instruments must be subjected to very precise calibration processes before and after launching. Celestial sources are often used as external references for calibration after launch, but these sources are not perfectly characterized. As a baseline option, L2-CalSat is based on the CubeSat standard and serves as a perfectly known source of a reference signal to reduce polarization measurements uncertainty. A preliminary design of L2-CalSat is described and, according to the scanning strategy followed by the telescope, the influence of the relative position between the spacecrafts in the calibration process is studied. This new calibration element will have a huge impact on the performance of CMB space missions, providing a significant improvement in the measurements accuracy without requiring new and costly technological developments.The detection of cancer biomarkers in the early stages could prevent cancer-related deaths significantly. Nanomaterials combined with biomolecules are extensively used in drug delivery, imaging, and sensing applications by targeting the overexpressed cancer proteins such as folate receptors (FRs) to control the disease by providing earlier treatments. In this investigation, biocompatible reduced graphene oxide (rGO) nanosheets combined with folic acid (FA)-a vitamin with high bioaffinity to FRs-is utilized to develop an electrochemical sensor for cancer detection. To mimic the cancer cell environment, FR-β protein is used to evaluate the response of the rGO-FA sensor. The formation of the rGO-FA nanocomposite was confirmed through various characterization techniques. A glassy carbon (GC) electrode was then modified with the obtained rGO-FA and analyzed via differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) for its specific detection towards FRs. Using the DPV technique, the rGO-FA-modified electrode exhibited a limit of detection (LOD) of 1.69 pM, determined in a linear concentration range from 6 to 100 pM. This excellent electrochemical performance towards FRs detection could provide a significant contribution towards future cancer diagnosis. Moreover, the rGO-FA sensing platform also showed excellent specificity and reliability when tested against similar interfering biomolecules. This rGO-FA sensor offers a great promise to the future medical industry through its highly sensitive detection towards FRs in a fast, reliable, and economical way.Identification of the protein targets of hit molecules is essential in the drug discovery process. Target prediction with machine learning algorithms can help accelerate this search, limiting the number of required experiments. However, Drug-Target Interactions databases used for training present high statistical bias, leading to a high number of false positives, thus increasing time and cost of experimental validation campaigns. To minimize the number of false positives among predicted targets, we propose a new scheme for choosing negative examples, so that each protein and each drug appears an equal number of times in positive and negative examples. We artificially reproduce the process of target identification for three specific drugs, and more globally for 200 approved drugs. For the detailed three drug examples, and for the larger set of 200 drugs, training with the proposed scheme for the choice of negative examples improved target prediction results the average number of false positives among the top ranked predicted targets decreased, and overall, the rank of the true targets was improved.Our method corrects databases' statistical bias and reduces the number of false positive predictions, and therefore the number of useless experiments potentially undertaken.Zijuan tea (Camellia sinensis var. assamica cv. Zijuan) is a unique purple tea. Recently, purple tea has drawn much attention for its special flavor and health benefits. However, the characteristic compounds of purple tea compared with green tea have not been reported yet. The present study employed a non-targeted metabolomics approach based on ultra-high performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC)-Orbitrap-tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) for comprehensive analysis of characteristic metabolites between Zijuan purple tea (ZJT) and Yunkang green tea (YKT). Partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) indicated that there are significant differences in chemical profiles between ZJT and YKT. https://www.selleckchem.com/ALK.html A total of 66 major differential metabolites included catechins, proanthocyanins, flavonol and flavone glycosides, phenolic acids, amino acids and alkaloids were identified in ZJT. Among them, anthocyanins are the most characteristic metabolites. Nine glycosides of anthocyanins and six glycosides of proanthocyanins were found to be significantly higher in ZJT than that in YKT. Subsequently, pathway analysis revealed that ZJT might generate anthocyanins and proanthocyanins through the flavonol and flavone glycosides. Furthermore, quantitative analysis showed absolutely higher concentrations of total anthocyanins in ZJT, which correlated with the metabolomics results. This study presented the comprehensive chemical profiling and the characterized metabolites of ZJT. These results also provided chemical evidence for potential health functions of ZJT.
In support of claims that their products have antioxidant properties, the food industry and dietary supplement manufacturers rely solely on the in vitro determination of the ORAC (oxygen radical antioxidant capacity) value, despite its acknowledged lack of any in vivo relevance. It thus appears necessary to use tests exploiting biological materials (blood, white blood cells) capable of producing physiological free radicals, in order to evaluate more adequately the antioxidant capacities of foods such as fruit and vegetable juices.

Two approaches to assessing the antioxidant capacities of 21 commercial fruit and vegetable juices were compared the ORAC assay and the "PMA-whole blood assay," which uses whole blood stimulated by phorbol myristate acetate to produce the superoxide anion. We described in another paper the total polyphenol contents (TPCs) and individual phenolic compound contents of all the juices were investigated.

Ranking of the juices from highest to lowest antioxidant capacity differed considerably according to the test used, so there was no correlation (
= 0.