Vol. 51 No. 2 (2019)

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a chronic disease of the joints and bones due to trauma or other joint-related diseases (secondary). Synovial inflammation commonly causes disturbance in joint homeostasis, which is associated with OA. Enzymes such as aggrecanase and metalloproteinase generate cartilage damage, mediated by tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) and interleukin (IL)-1. Pro-inflammatory cytokines, including TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6, are responsible for regulation of the extracellular matrix, cartilage degradation, and apoptosis of chondrocytes. This study aimed to observe the cell viability and…

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effectivity of batch culture phytoremediation to remediate irrigation water that was contaminated with 6.4 µL/L synthetic pesticide Prevathon. This was a true experimental research study using a completely randomized design, conducted in a 30 L bucket with sand and gravel as the substrate. The treatment comprised five types of hydromacrophytes (emergent, floating leaf, submerged, polyculture and control without plants), repeated three times at the same time. The effectiveness of the phytoremediation model was determined by water physicochemical…

The aim of this research was to study the antidiabetic activity of root extract of Ruellia tuberosa L. on rats (Rattus novergicus) induced by multiple low doses of streptozotocin. The parameters investigated were blood glucose levels, protease activities, and the histopathologic profiles of the kidneys. Three groups of rats, i.e. control, diabetic, and treatment, were used. R. tuberosa L. extracts were given orally for treatment at a dose of 250 mg/kg body weight per day for 21 consecutive days. The induced diabetes group treated with root extract of R. tuberosa L. (group III) had 60.3% lower…

In this study, different aerial parts of Monotheca Buxifolia were screened for their antibacterial, antifungal, and anti-oxidant activity. Extract of the fruit was most active against P. mirabilis, MSSA and M. morganii strains. Moreover, the methanolic fruit extract demonstrated good antibacterial properties against VRSA, S. aureus and Acinetobacter. Despite having good antibacterial properties, Monotheca buxifolia showed low antifungal activity. The cytotoxic activity was the highest in the pet-ether fruit extract, causing 60% of lethality against Artemia salina larvae with LD50 at 3.307.…

In this paper, assuming that N is a near-ring and P is an ideal of N, the P-center of N, the P-center of an element in N, the P-identities of N are defined. Their properties and relations are investigated. It is shown that the set of all P-identities in N is a multiplicative subsemigroup of N. Also, P-right and P-left permutable and P-medial near-rings are defined and some properties and connections are given. P-regular and P-strongly regular near-rings are studied. P-completely prime ideals are introduced and some characterizations of -completely prime near-rings are provided. Also, some…

Spirulina platensis is a microalgae species that contains phycocyanin, a blue pigment that is widely used in the food, cosmetic and pharmaceutical industries. The objective of this study was to isolate phycocyanin from dried biomass of Spirulina platensis. The optimum extraction was through freeze-thawing extraction with 0.01 M phosphate buffer pH 7. Purification was done using 50% ammonium sulphate precipitation, dialysis, and gel filtration chromatography. The purity ratio of the purified product was 1.729 (A615/A280). Characterization of isolate, carried out using SDS-PAGE, gave molecular…

Global approaches for estimating geophysical model parameters have been proposed by several authors, including their application for gravity interpretation, which is currently limited to simple and fixed geometrical problems. This paper proposes implementation of Very Fast Simulated Annealing (VFSA) in two-dimensional gravity interpretation problems, which are still rarely addressed. The modeling domain was divided into smaller sub-domains and gravity anomaly calculation was carried out based on the Talwani formulation. To improve the uniqueness of the solution of under-determined problems,…