The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of Nigella sativa (NS) fixed oil in comparison to dexamethasone (Dex) on inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), peripheral blood eosinophils (PBE), allergen specific serum IgG1 and interleukins and airway inflammation in a murine model of allergic asthma. Thirty-one mice were divided into four groups. Group I (n = 6) served as the control gr...

The multifunctional protein helper component proteinase (HC-Pro) is thought to interfere with the activity of the 20S proteasome; however, no sites of interaction have been identified for either protein. Here, we first show that the Potato virus Y (PVY) HC-Pro protein can interact with three Arabidopsis 20S proteasome subunits (PAA, PBB, and PBE), using a yeast two-hybrid system and the bimolec...

This paper investigates the Jahn-Teller effect in the icosahedral cation B(80)(+) and compares the descent in symmetry with that in C(60)(+). For both cations the icosahedral ground state is a (2)H(u) state, which exhibits a H ⊗ (g ⊕ 2h) Jahn-Teller instability. A detailed construction of the potential energy surface of B(80)(+) using different DFT methods including B3LYP/6-31G(d), VWN/6-31G(d)...

We present four benchmark databases of binding energies for nonbonded complexes. Four types of nonbonded interactions are considered:  hydrogen bonding, charge transfer, dipole interactions, and weak interactions. We tested 44 DFT methods and 1 WFT method against the new databases; one of the DFT methods (PBE1KCIS) is new, and all of the other methods are from the literature. Among the tested m...

The accurate first-principles prediction of the energetic properties of molecules and clusters from efficient semilocal density functionals is of broad interest. Here we study the performance of a non-empirical Tao-Mo (TM) density functional on binding energies and excitation energies of titanium dioxide and water clusters, as well as reaction barrier heights. To make a comparison, a combinatio...

The structure and surface energies of the cleaved, reconstructed, and fully hydroxylated (001) a-quartz surface of various thicknesses are investigated with periodic density functional theory (DFT). The properties of the cleaved and hydroxylated surface are reproduced with a slab thickness of 18 atomic layers, while a thicker 27-layer slab is necessary for the reconstructed surface. The perform...

CuCrO2 is the most promising Cu-based delafossite for p-type optoelectronic devices. Despite this, little is known about the p-type conduction mechanism of this material, with both Cu/Cu and Cr/Cr hole mechanisms being proposed. In this article we examine the electronic structure, thermodynamic stability and the p-type defect chemistry of this ternary compound using density functional theory wi...

We present the results of density functional theory (DFT) calculations on magnetite, Fe3O4, which has been recently considered as electrode in the emerging field of organic spintronics. Given the nature of the potential applications, we evaluated the magnetite room-temperature cubic [Formula: see text] phase in terms of structural, electronic, and magnetic properties. We considered GGA (PBE), G...

School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Science, Flinders University of South Australia, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide SA 5001, Australia Defence Science & Technology Organisation, PO Box 44, Pyrmont NSW 2009, Australia Institute of Nanoscale Technology, University of Technology Sydney, PO Box 123, Broadway, NSW 2007, Australia Abstract The electronic band structures of Be and BeO have been measured by...

BACKGROUND Computer-based examinations (CBE) ensure higher efficiency with respect to producibility and assessment compared to paper-based examinations (PBE). However, students often have objections against CBE and are afraid of getting poorer results in a CBE.The aims of this study were (1) to assess the readiness and the objections of students to a CBE vs. PBE (2) to examine the acceptance an...