12 research outputs found
Microbiologically Contaminated and Over-Preserved Cosmetic Products According Rapex 2008-2014
No full textWe investigated the Rapid Alert System (RAPEX) database from January 2008 until week 26 of 2014 to give information to consumers about microbiologically contaminated cosmetics and over-preserved cosmetic products. Chemical risk was the leading cause of the recalls (87.47%). Sixty-two cosmetic products (11.76%) were recalled because they were contaminated with pathogenic or potentially pathogenic microorganisms. Pseudomonas aeruginosa was the most frequently found microorganism. Other microorganisms found were: Mesophilic aerobic microorganisms, Staphylococcus aureus, Candida albicans, Enterococcus spp., Enterobacter cloacae, Enterococcus faecium, Enterobacter gergoviae, Rhizobium radiobacter, Burkholderia cepacia, Serratia marcescens, Achromabacter xylosoxidans, Klebsiella oxytoca, Bacillus firmus, Pantoea agglomerans, Pseudomonas putida, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Citrobacter freundii. Nine cosmetic products were recalled because they contained methylisothiazolinone (0.025%–0.36%), benzalkonium chloride (1%), triclosan (0.4%) in concentrations higher than the limits allowed by European Regulation 1223/2009. Fifteen products were recalled for the presence of methyldibromo glutaronitrile, a preservative banned for use in cosmetics. Thirty-two hair treatment products were recalled because they contained high concentrations of formaldehyde (0.3%–25%)
Quantitative determination of phenolics compounds in Origanum vulgare extract by high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometric detection
No full textPhenolic compounds in 80% MeOH extract of oregano (Origanum vulgare L.) were analysed by reversed phase HPLC, follewed by tandem mass spectrometric detection. For the first time thirty nine phenolics, corresponding to flavonoids, flavonoid glycosides, benzoic acids, cinnamic acids, coumarins and lignans were quantified in oregano extract.
Quinic acid, naringenin, luteoline-7-O-glucoside, caffeic acid, apigenin and luteolin were the most abundant phenols detected in oregano extract
Effects of different essential oils on HaCat keratinocytes against hydrogen peroxide induced oxidative stress
No full textThe effect of different concentrations of common juniper, oregano, laurel, lavander, sage and myrtie essential oils on human skin cell HaCat in vitro was explored. This study has demonstrated that all essential oils were cytotoxic to human keratinocytes in vitro at a concentration of 1% (v/v). At a concentration of 0.1%, all essential oils, with the exception of Laurus nobilis L., were still irritating. At lower concentrations all essential oils showed no toxicity and no protective effect on HaCat human keratinocytes from oxidative stress induced by exposure to hydrogen peroxide
Antimicrobial Activity and Chemical Composition of Albanian Oregano
No full textAntimicrobial activity of methanolic and aqueous methanolic extracts of oregano was tested against: Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538, Pseudomonas spp, Candida albicans ATCC 10231, Listeria monocytogenes ATCC 19111 and Salmonella typhimurium ATCC 14028. Antimicrobial activity of oregano essential oil was also tested against: E.coli, P.aeruginosa, S.aureus and C. albicans. Only oregano essential oil was active against microorganisms selected. Essential oil of oregano was analysed by GC-MS. Eighteen components were identified representing 99.48% of the oil. Monoterpenes phenols and derivatives (borneol, 4-terpineol, carvacrol methyl ether, thymoquinone, thymol, carvacrol) represented 74.66 % of essential oil. Carvacrol, p-cymene, thymol and γ-terpinene were the main components. Sesquiterpenes such as trans-caryophyllene, α-humulene, β-bisabolene, δ-Cadinene, caryophyllene oxide were also found
Composition in Phenolic Compounds of Elderflower from Albania. Investigation of Antimicrobial Activity
No full textDried samples of elder flower were analysed HPLC-DADMS/MS to find out the major phenolic compounds. Five hydroxycinnamates (3-O-caffeoylquinic acid, 5-Ocaffeoylquinic acid, 1-/5-O-p-coumaroylquinic acid, 1/5,3di-O-caffeoylquinic acid, x,4-di-Ocaffeoylquinic acid) and six flavonol glycosides (quercetin-3-Orhamnosylglucoside, quercetin-3-O-glucoside, rhamnetin/isorhamnetin-3-O-hexoside, rhamnetin/isorhamnetin-3-O-rhamnosylglucoside, rhamnetin/isorhamnetin-3-O-acetylhexoside and naringenin) were identified. Two more flavonoid were tentativly identified as quercetine-O-dihexoside and naringenin chalcone. Antimicrobial activity of methanolic and aqueous methanolic extracts of S.nigra were tested against: Escherichia coli ATCC 25922, Staphylococcus aureus ATCC 6538, Pseudomonas spp, Candida albicans ATCC 10231, Listeria monocytogenes ATCC 19111 and Salmonella typhimurium ATCC 14028. Elder flower extracts (1 mg/mL) failed to inhibit the growth of microorganisms tested
A Co-contextual Type Checker for Featherweight Java
No full textThis paper addresses compositional and incremental type checking for object-oriented programming languages. Recent work achieved incremental type checking for structurally typed functional languages through co-contextual typing rules, a constraint-based formulation that removes any context dependency for expression typings. However, that work does not cover key features of object-oriented languages: Subtype polymorphism, nominal typing, and implementation inheritance. Type checkers encode these features in the form of class tables, an additional form of typing context inhibiting incrementalization.
In the present work, we demonstrate that an appropriate co-contextual notion to class tables exists, paving the way to efficient incremental type checkers for object-oriented languages. This yields a novel formulation of Igarashi et al.'s Featherweight Java (FJ) type system, where we replace class tables by the dual concept of class table requirements and class table operations by dual operations on class table requirements. We prove the equivalence of FJ's type system and our co-contextual formulation. Based on our formulation, we implemented an incremental FJ type checker and compared its performance against javac on a number of realistic example programs
“Factors Associated with Child Maltreatment” (Case of Tirana Shelter for Victims of Domestic Violence)
No full textThis paper is focused on the factors that cause violence on children at home environment. The author based her research work mainly on observations of children’s behavior and their interactions with mothers while staying at a ‘Shelter for Battered Women and Girls’. Children’s artwork, writing pieces, memories, playing mood were subject to interpretation. A group of twenty-two children were studied. Although the terms child abuse and neglect are frequently used together, actually they refer to two different types of problems, each taking different forms. A more appropriate comprehensive term is child maltreatment which can be divided into two major types: child abuse and child neglect (Faller, Bowden, Jones and Hildebrandt, 1981). The author believes that the results of this research will serve as an professional tool for social workers, psychologists, teachers and other professionals who work closely with children to help identify factors related to child abuse, prevention of abuse and treatment of physically, emotionally and sexually abused children
The phytochemistry of Ganoderma species and their medicinal potentials
No full textThe Ganoderma genus is known for its diverse use as a functional food and therapeutic agent. This fungus has over 428 species, with Ganoderma lucidum being the most studied. The Ganoderma species produce several secondary metabolites and bioactive compounds like polysaccharides, phenols, and triterpenes, which are largely responsible for their therapeutic properties. Throughout this review, several extracts obtained from Ganoderma species have been studied to delve into their therapeutic characteristics and mechanisms. Such properties like immunomodulation, antiaging, antimicrobial, and anticancer activities have been demonstrated by several Ganoderma species and are supported by a large body of evidence. Although its phytochemicals play a vital role in its therapeutic properties, identifying the therapeutic potentials of fungal-secreted metabolites for human health-promoting benefits is a challenging task. Identification of novel compounds with distinct chemical scaffolds and their mechanism of action could help suppress the spread of rising pathogens. Thus, this review provides an updated and comprehensive overview of the bioactive components in different Ganoderma species and the underlying physiological mechanisms.peer-reviewe
Translation variants of Franz Kafka's metamorphosis into Albanian language
No full textThe focus of this article is the comparative review of the translated versions of Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis into the Albanian language. Based on theoretical concepts on literary translation, the study uses the comparative method in the review of four translated variants into Albanian by the translators: Rexhep Hida (1992), Ardian Klosi (2010), Gjergj Vlashi (2012) and Primo Shllaku (2018), which also make up the corpus of this study. The aim is to identify the translated variant in the Albanian language which is closest to Kafka's source text, based on the fact that the difficulties of translation and its challenges are related to a number of internal and external factors such as the selection of semantic equivalences, the re-creation of the effect of the work in a new language without missing the message of the source text, etc. The paper begins with a philological analysis (Solar 1976, 31) of the editions of the versions at different times and continues the analysis on the evaluation of the translations based on three aspects: structural, semantic as well as syntactic-morphological and spelling ones. In conclusion, we can say that the translations of the work Metamorphosis represent new variants. They aim to adhere to the original source text by trying to select semantic, structural and linguistic equivalences that best preserve the meaning of the source text and convey its artistic effect. These equivalences are conditioned by the complexity and purpose of the source text, the language and style of the author, as well as by the translator's form of understanding and the linguistic competence he possesses.Received: 20 November 2022 Accepted: 26 March 2023 Published: 09 April 2023</p
Leveraging Word Embeddings and Transformers to Extract Semantics from Building Regulations Text
No full textIn the recent years, the interest to knowledge extraction in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) domain has grown dramatically. Along with the advances in the AEC domain, a massive amount of data is collected from sensors, project management software, drones and 3D scanning. However, the construction regulatory knowledge has maintained primarily in the form of unstructured text. Natural Language Processing (NLP) has been recently introduced to the construction industry to extract underlying knowledge from unstructured data. For instance, NLP can be used to extract key information from construction contracts and specifications, identify potential risks, and automate compliance checking. It is considered impractical for construction engineers and stakeholders to author formal, accurate, and structured building regulatory rules. However, previous efforts on extracting knowledge from unstructured text in AEC domain have mainly focused on basic concepts and hierarchies for ontology engineering using traditional NLP techniques, rather than deeply digging in the nature of the used NLP techniques and their abilities to capture semantics from the building regulations text. In this context, this paper focuses on the development of a semantic-based testing approach that studies the performance of modern NLP techniques, namely word embeddings and transformers, on extracting semantic regularities within the building regulatory text. Specifically, this paper studies the ability of word2vec, BERT, and Sentence BERT (SBERT) to extract semantic regularities from the British building regulations at both word and sentence levels. The UK building regulations code has been used as a dataset. The ground truth of semantic regulations has been manually curated from the well-established Brick Ontology to test the performance of the proposed NLP techniques to capture the semantic regularities from the building regulatory text. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses have been performed, and the obtained results show that modern NLP techniques can reliably capture semantic regularities from the building regulations text at both word and sentence levels, with an accuracy that reaches 80% at the word-level, and hits 100% at the sentence-level
