Cancer, malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis, and their corresponding multi-drug-resistant strains among other diseases have entered into the 21st century as major human medical problems. Since ancient times mankind has dealt with health problems using drugs produced by Nature. The plant kingdom has long been exploited in many aspects and specially as a source of drugs. Indeed, evidence about the first ...

Equisetum giganteum is a plant used in traditional medicine as diuretic. From our knowledge this is the first time this plant is tested in an in vivo model of acute inflammation. To evaluate the effect of aqueous extract of giant horsetail (AEGH) as immunomodulatory therapy, antigen-induced arthritis (AIA) was generated in mice with methylated bovine serum albumin (mBSA). Inflammation was evalu...

The disinfection by-product (DBP) formation potential (FP) of natural organic matter (NOM) in surface water sources has been studied with reference to the key water quality determinants (WQDs) of UV absorption (UV254), colour, and dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration. The data set used encompassed raw and treated water sampled over a 30-month period from 30 water treatment works (WTWs) ...

Data from Hospital Activity Analysis (HAA) for the Wessex Health Region show a 70% increase in hospital admissions for torsion of the testis between 1971 and 1982. The frequency of emergency admission leading to orchidopexy doubled, but there was no increase in the rate of emergency admission followed by orchidectomy. Detailed investigation of records from Southampton hospitals suggests that th...

This TEP proposes a hardware abstraction for analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) in TinyOS 2.x, which is aligned to the three-layer Hardware Abstraction Architecture (HAA) specified in [TEP2]. It describes some design principles and documents the set of hardware-independent interfaces to an ADC.

Experiments were carried out to determine if variations in adult native speaker performance arise from variations in working memory capacity (Just & Carpenter, 1992) or variations in procedural grammatical competence (Ericsson & Kintsch, 1995). Three groups of 18-year-old native speakers of English were tested on comprehension and recall of English Complex NP constructions. Two groups were ‘low...

The occurrences of trihalomethanes (THMs), haloacetic acids (HAAs) and heterotrophic bacteria were monitored in five small water systems over a nine-month period to investigate the association between HAA degradation and heterotrophic bacteria populations. The sampling sites were chosen to cover the entire distribution network for each system. An inverse association between heterotrophic bacter...

This paper presents a new approach for optimization under uncertainty in the presence of probabilistic, interval and mixed uncertainties, avoiding the need to specify probability distributions on uncertain parameters when such information is not readily available. Existing approaches for optimization under these types of uncertainty mostly rely on treating combinations of statistical moments as...

Equisetum giganteum L. (E. giganteum), Equisetaceae, commonly called "giant horsetail," is an endemic plant of Central and South America and is used in traditional medicine as diuretic and hemostatic in urinary disorders and in inflammatory conditions among other applications. The chemical composition of the extract EtOH 70% of E. giganteum has shown a clear presence of phenolic compounds deriv...

Heavy metals polluting the natural environment are absorbed by plants. The use of herbs as components of cosmetics may pose a health risk for humans. The aim of the study was to determine the concentrations of Pb, Cd and Hg in selected species of herbs (horsetail Equisetum arvense, nettle Urtica dioica, St. John's wort Hypericum perforatum, wormwood Artemisia absinthium, yarrow Achillea millefo...