We treated 11 patients with vernal keratoconjunctivitis for four to nine months with topical cyclosporine as a 2% dilution in castor oil. No significant side effects occurred, except for mild and transient burning upon administration. Within the first 15 days, both symptoms and signs of the condition improved significantly, and these results were maintained throughout the entire treatment. Rela...

Root symbioses with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobial bacteria share a common signaling pathway in legumes. Among the common symbiosis genes are CASTOR and POLLUX, the twin homologous genes in Lotus japonicus that encode putative ion channel proteins. Here, we show that the orthologs of CASTOR and POLLUX are ubiquitously present and highly conserved in both legumes and nonlegumes. Usin...

Ricinine (3-cyano-4-methoxy-N-methyl-2-pyridone) is a urinary biomarker that can be measured to confirm human exposure to castor bean products such as ricin. Because many consumer products contain castor oil, another castor bean product, ricinine may be detectable in the general population. The following study characterized urinary ricinine concentrations from 989 individuals who were presumed ...

Methods The ethyl acetate extract of Pedalium murex L., (250, 500, and 1000 mg/kg body weight) was administered orally to three groups of rats (five animals per group) in order to evaluate the activity of the extract against castor oil-induced diarrhea model in rat. Two other groups received normal saline (5mg/kg) and loperamide (5mg/kg) as positive control. The effect of the extract on intesti...

The   stembark of Mammea africana is used traditionally for the treatment of stomach pains. The present study was designed to evaluate the effects of ethanolic stembark extract of Mammea africana on experimentally induced diarrhoea and ulcer . The extract ( 30 – 90mg/kg) was administered orally in rats 30 minutes to one hour before the induction of diarrhoeal and ulcer using di...

Native de-oiled and treated castor seed meal was subjected to proximate analysis and quantification of anti-nutrients (phytochemicals). Seed cake was treated by biochemical technique of solid state fermentation with Aspergillus niger and addition of calcium oxide (CaO) to give treated castor seed meal (TCSM). One hundred and twenty Japanese quails (Coturnix coturnix japonica) were fed four (4) ...

Four native species of parasitic mites belonging to the genus Schizocarpus Trouessart, 1896 (Acariformes: Chirodiscidae) are recorded on the North American beaver Castor canadensis Kuhl, 1820 (Rodentia: Castoridae) from Russia. Totally ten beavers from all three main geographically isolated populations of in Russia (Leningrad Province, Voronezh Biosphere Reserve (beaver farm) and Khabarovsk Ter...

Efficient evaluation of complex SPARQL queries is still an open research problem. State-of-the-art engines are based on relational database technologies. We approach the problem from the perspective of Constraint Programming (CP), a technology designed for solving NP-hard problems. Such technology allows us to exploit SPARQL filters early-on during the search instead of as a post-processing ste...

Lesquerella is a potential industrial oilseed crop that makes hydroxy fatty acid (HFA). Unlike castor its seeds are not poisonous but accumulate lesquerolic acid mostly at the sn-1 and sn-3 positions of triacylglycerol (TAG), whereas castor contains ricinoleic acid (18:1OH) at all three positions. To investigate whether lesquerella can be engineered to accumulate HFAs in the sn-2 position, mult...