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Preventive effects of Salvia officinalis leaf extract on insulin resistance and inflammation in a model of high fat diet-induced obesity in mice that responds to rosiglitazone
Get PDFBackground Salvia officinalis (sage) is a native plant to the Mediterranean region and has been used for a long time in traditional medicine for various diseases. We investigated possible anti-diabetic, anti-inflammatory and anti-obesity effects of sage methanol (MetOH) extract in a nutritional mouse model of obesity, inflammation and insulin resistance, as well as its effects on lipolysis and lipogenesis in 3T3-L1 cells.
Methods Diet-induced obese (DIO) mice were treated for 5 weeks with sage methanol extract (100 and 400 mg.kg-1/day. bid), or rosiglitazone (3 mg.kg-1/day. bid), as a positive control. Energy expenditure, food intake, body weight, fat mass, liver glycogen and lipid content were evaluated. Blood glucose, and plasma levels of insulin, lipids leptin and pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines were measured throughout the experiment. The effects of sage MetOH extract on lipolysis and lipogenesis were tested in vitro in 3T3-L1 cells.
Results After two weeks of treatment, the lower dose of sage MetOH extract decreased blood glucose and plasma insulin levels during an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). An insulin tolerance test (ITT), performed at day 29 confirmed that sage improved insulin sensitivity. Groups treated with low dose sage and rosiglitazone showed very similar effects on OGTT and ITT. Sage also improved HOMA-IR, triglycerides and NEFA. Treatment with the low dose increased the plasma levels of the anti-inflammatory cytokines IL-2, IL-4 and IL-10 and reduced the plasma level of the pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-12, TNF-α, and KC/GRO.
The GC analysis revealed the presence of two PPARs agonist in sage MetOH extract.
In vitro, the extract reduced in a dose-related manner the accumulation of lipid droplets; however no effect on lipolysis was observed.
Conclusions Sage MetOH extract at low dose exhibits similar effects to rosiglitazone. It improves insulin sensitivity, inhibits lipogenesis in adipocytes and reduces inflammation as judged by plasma cytokines. Sage presents an alternative to pharmaceuticals for the treatment of diabetes and associated inflammation
Automatic Detection of Image Morphing by Topology-based Analysis
No full textTopological Data Analysis (TDA) is an emerging framework for the understanding of Bigdata. This paper investigates and develops a TDA approach to image forensics that exploits the sensitivity to image tampering of a variety of persistent homological invariants of simplicial complexes constructed for certain automatically computed image texture landmarks. For each image, we construct sequences of simplicial complexes, whose vertices are the selected set of landmarks, for a sequence of distance thresholds and use a variety of homological invariants (e.g. number of connected components) to distinguish natural face images from morphed ones. We shall demonstrate the richness of TDA in dealing with image tampering by testing the performance of this approach on a large benchmark image dataset of passport photos in detecting various known morphing attacks
Ludovico Dolce’s Aretino: Its foundational role in the theory of classicism and its eighteenth-century revival
No full textIn its criticism of Michelangelo’s late production and reverence for Raphael and the Antique, Ludovico Dolce’s Aretino (1557) provided a few founding principles that would be fully developed by the classicist theory of art in the following centuries. Frequently discussed in academic circles during the seventeenth century, Dolce’s polemical dialogue was eventually reprinted in French and Italian in 1735 with a preface by Nicolas Vleughels, director of the French Academy in Rome, who drastically reformed the institution, laying the ground for the spread of the neo-classical aesthetic in the second half of the century. This essay will discuss the seminal role of Dolce’s Aretino in the formulation of a classicist theory of art and its impact on eighteenth-century art theory and academic practices
Quaternionic geometry in dimension eight
Get PDFWe describe the 8-dimensional Wolf spaces as cohomogeneity
one SU(3)-manifolds, and discover perturbations of the quaternion kahler metric on the simply-connected 8-manifold G2/SO(4) that carry a closed fundamental 4-form but are not Einstein
Knowledge management in consultancy-involved process improvement projects: Cases from Chinese SMEs
Get PDFKnowledge management (KM) is considered as an effective strategy to improve organisational performance. In its application to small and medium enterprises (SMEs), resource constraints mean that exploitation of knowledge from external sources, such as management consultants, is often needed. Drawing on the knowledge management literature, in particular the theory associated with liminality, this study explores practical KM issues encountered by Chinese SMEs when working with management consultants to introduce new business improvement practices from a multi-level practice-based perspective. A comparative case study is conducted focusing on two consultancy-involved process improvement projects in Chinese manufacturing SMEs. The case results suggest a clear KM strategy is needed at the outset of the project and SME managers and employees need to play a proactive role in the learning and adoption of new knowledge. The research is novel in that it is the first study to explore knowledge management and the notion of liminality within the context of consultancy-involved Chinese SME improvement projects. The paper culminates with two research propositions that require further empirical study. Implications of this research are provided for SME owner/managers and management consultants
Connect 4: a novel paradigm to elicit positive and negative insight and search problem solving
Get PDFResearchers have typically defined insight as a sudden new idea or understanding accompanied by an emotional feeling of Aha.
Recently, examples of negative insight in everyday creative problem solving have been identified. These are seen as sudden and
sickening moments of realisation experienced as an Uh-oh rather than Aha. However, such experiences have yet to be explored
from an experimental perspective. One barrier to doing so is that methods to elicit insight in the lab. are constrained to positive
insight. This study therefore aimed to develop a novel methodology that elicits both positive and negative insight solving, and
additionally provides the contrasting experiences of analytic search solving in the same controlled conditions. The game of Connect
4 was identified as having the potential to produce these experiences, with each move representing a solving episode (where best
to place the counter). Eighty participants played six games of Connect 4 against a computer and reported each move as being a
product of positive search, positive insight, negative search or negative insight. Phenomenological ratings were then collected to
provide validation of the experiences elicited. The results demonstrated that playing Connect 4 saw reporting of insight and
search experiences that were both positive and negative, with the majority of participants using all four solving types.
Phenomenological ratings suggest that these reported experiences were comparable to those elicited by existing laboratory
methods focused on positive insight. This establishes the potential for Connect 4 to be used in future problem solving research as a
reliable elicitation tool of insight and search experiences for both positive and negative solving. Furthermore, Connect 4 may be
seen to offer more true to life solving experiences than other paradigms where a series of problems are solved working towards
an overall superordinate goal rather than the presentation of stand-alone and un-related problems. Future work will need to look
to develop versions of Connect 4 with greater control in order to fully utilise this methodology for creative problem solving
research in experimental psychology and neuroscience contexts
A FUZZY GOAL PROGRAMMING APPROACH FOR SOLVING MULTI-OBJECTIVE SUPPLY CHAIN NETWORK PROBLEMS WITH PARETO-DISTRIBUTED RANDOM VARIABLES
Get PDFUncertainty is unavoidable and addressing the same is inevitable. That everything is available at our doorstep is due to a well-managed modern global supply chain, which takes place despite its efficiency and effectiveness being threatened by various sources of uncertainty originating from the demand side, supply side, manufacturing process, and planning and control systems. This paper addresses the demand- and supply-rooted uncertainty. In order to cope with uncertainty within the constrained multi-objective supply chain network, this paper develops a fuzzy goal programming methodology, with solution procedures. The probabilistic fuzzy goal multi-objective supply chain network (PFG-MOSCN) problem is thus formulated and then solved by three different approaches, namely, simple additive goal programming approach, weighted goal programming approach, and pre-emptive goal programming approach, to obtain the optimal solution. The proposed work links fuzziness in transportation cost and delivery time with randomness in demand and supply parameters. The results may prove to be important for operational managers in manufacturing units, interested in optimizing transportation costs and delivery time, and implicitly, in optimizing profits. A numerical example is provided to illustrate the proposed model
Schwartz rounds in undergraduate medical education facilitates active reflection and individual identification of learning need
Get PDFStrategies applying Schwartz Rounds to improve wellbeing of medical students has focused on the clinical years of study. This pilot study investigates whether Schwartz Rounds could be effective in developing students’ reflective practice in Year 2 undergraduates. Engagement with the Schwartz Round was high with over 50% of the students identifying learning needs through reflection on the Round. Schwartz Rounds promoted recognition of the value of reflective practice and increased self-awareness of student needs
Defining Remote Warfare: Intelligence Sharing after 9/11
No full textRemote warfare is underpinned by a complex web of intelligence sharing between partners. In a world characterised by complex transnational threats, the logic of such sharing is difficult to dispute. At the same time, considerable risks are present in ensuring that human rights abuses and compromises to the right to privacy are not realised by multilateral intelligence sharing. This paper considers the state of play of intelligence-sharing in contemporary remote warfare, and the degree to which the benefits of sharing are balanced by the mitigation of risk
