Background and objectives: Safflower (Carthamus tinctorious L.) florets contain valuable red and yellow pigments and are used in food, textile dying, and pharmaceutical industries. Red carthamine pigment is formed from a yellow precursor, precarthamine, through an oxidation reaction at the end of flowers' maturation stage. The present study was conducted to find out the most effective ...

In this work we analyze the pigments used in the decoration of red and yellow motifs present in the portable art of the Parpalló Cave (Gandía, Spain), one of the most important Palaeolithic sites in the Spanish Mediterranean region. Energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (EDXRF) and spectrophotometry in the visible region (CIEL*a*b*color coordinates and spectral reflectance curves) w...

The aim of this work is not only the synthesis of black ceramic pigment with spinel structure using local and inexpensive minerals (chromite and manganese ores) but also throw some light on the relations between the structure and the colour of obtained pigment. Ultimate utilization spinel solid solution in ceramic materials is mostly due to their structure characteristics, their thermal and che...

The anterior sensory vesicle of ascidian larvae contains a single large vesicle in which lie two distinct types of pigment cells, anterior and posterior. The ultrastructure of these pigment cells suggests that the anterior pigment cell is an otolith, presumably used for gravity detection, and the posterior pigment cell is an ocellus, used for photoreception. However, there is no direct experime...

Cryotherapy, first advocated by Bietti (I933), has been widely accepted as a useful means of achieving adhesion in the treatment of retinal detachment. It was later popularised by Lincoff, McLean, and Nano (i964), who subsequently used this form of treatment in their modifications of the Custodis procedure for the treatment of retinal detachment (Lincoff, Baras, and McLean, I965). Various compl...

Among the identified risk factors of age-related macular degeneration, sunlight is known to induce cumulative damage to the retina. A photosensitive derivative of the visual pigment, N-retinylidene-N-retinylethanolamine (A2E), may be involved in this phototoxicity. The high energy visible light between 380 nm and 500 nm (blue light) is incriminated. Our aim was to define the most toxic waveleng...

The integrity of retinal pigment epithelial cells is critical for photoreceptor cell survival and vision. The essential omega-3 fatty acid, docosahexaenoic acid, attains its highest concentration in the human body in photoreceptors. Docosahexaenoic acid is the essential precursor of neuroprotectin D1 (NPD1). NPD1 acts against apoptosis mediated by A2E, a byproduct of phototransduction that beco...

purpose : to determine the maximum non-toxic dose of recombinant human erythropoietin (epo) in rabbit eyes methods : eight rabbits (sixteen eyes) were scheduled for evaluating side effects of four intravitreal doses of 1000, 2000, 4000 and 5000 iu of epo, two rabbits for each dose. for each dose (two rabbits), the drug was injected for the right eyes. balanced salt solution (bss) was injected i...

The accumulation of N-retinylidene-N-retinylethanolamine (A2E, a toxic by-product of the visual pigment cycle) in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is a major cause of visual impairment in the elderly. Photooxidation of A2E results in retinal pigment epithelium degeneration followed by that of associated photoreceptors. Present treatments rely on nutrient supplementation with antioxidants. 9...