BACKGROUND The constant exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation (UV) has a variety of harmful effects on human health. Although synthetic sunscreen products have been introduced as a preventive/therapeutic strategy, with the realization of their adverse side effects, the recent trend is to search for human friendly alternative formulations especially of plant origin. Therefore, the present stud...

BACKGROUND The pastes prepared from roots of Plumbago zeylanica Linn. and barks of Holoptelea integrifolia Roxb. are widely used by traditional healers for the treatment of arthritis in rural northern Karnataka. OBJECTIVE The present study was undertaken to scientifically evaluate the safety and efficacy of traditionally used formulations in experimental animals. MATERIALS AND METHODS The s...

Vocalizing behavior of frogs and toads, once quantified, is useful for systematics, rapid species identification, behavioral experimentation and conservation monitoring. But yet, for many lineages vocalizations remain unknown or poorly quantified, especially in diversity rich tropical regions. Here we provide a quantitative acoustical analysis for all four Sri Lankan congeners of the genus Micr...

The amphipod Melita nitida Smith, 1873 is indigenous to the Atlantic coast of North America and so far has only been recorded as non-native species from the Pacific coast of North America and estuarine waters in The Netherlands. We detected a few specimens in the mesohaline part of the Kiel Canal (Germany) which showed considerable variation of some morphological characters. Transport in ballas...

Kodiveli is an important Siddha drug used in the formulations such as Podi, Ennai, Thylam, Chithramoola Kuligai and Kudineer. The HPTLC a simple method to differentiate closely related species. profiling of ethanolic extracts roots three species Plumbago (Plumbago zeylanica L. (Venkodiveli), P.indica L., (Senkodiveli) P. auriculata Lam. (Karunkodiveli)) has been carried out using Toluene: Ethyl...

Intact sperm cells of Plumbago zeylanica were released from mature pollen grains near anthesis using osmotic shock with 20% sucrose. Sperm cell yields of up to 75% can be attained by differential centrifugation using a clinical centrifuge with concentrations of up to 8.8 x 10(6) cells/milliliter. Such ;gametoplasts' remain intact for up to 24 hours according to Evan's blue exclusion and can be ...

Physicochemical parameters of roots of three Plumbago species, Plumbago capensis, P. rosea and P. zeylanica belonging to Plumbaginaceae were analyzed. Microbial contamination, aflatoxins, pesticide residue and heavy metal content were also determined. Attempt has also been made to estimate the biologically active chemical plumbagin present in them and the data compared. The study ensures that t...