Natural Coumarins: Exploring the Pharmacological Complexity and Underlying Molecular Mechanisms

Coumarins belong to the benzopyrone family commonly found in many medicinal plants. Natural coumarins demonstrated a wide spectrum of pharmacological activities, including anti-inflammatory, anticoagulant, anticancer, antibacterial, antimalarial, casein kinase-2 (CK2) inhibitory, antifungal, antiviral, Alzheimer’s disease inhibition, neuroprotective, anticonvulsant, phytoalexins, ulcerogenic, and antihypertensive. There are very few studies on the bioavailability of coumarins; therefore, further investigations are necessitated to study the bioavailability of different coumarins which already showed good biological activities in previous studies. On the evidence of varied pharmacological properties, the present work presents an overall review of the derivation, availability, and biological capacities of coumarins with further consideration of the essential mode of their therapeutic actions. In conclusion, a wide variety of coumarins are available, and their pharmacological activities are of current interest thanks to their synthetic accessibility and riches in medicinal plants. Coumarins perform the valuable function as therapeutic agents in a range of medical fields.

Deliberating Bodies

This chapter talks about the genuinely representative bodies in the old regime. It describes the Estates-General, the provincial Estates in the pays d'états, the quinquennial assemblies of the clergy, the occasional assemblies of notables, and the provincial assemblies that were created in the last decade before the French Revolution. It assesses how the representative bodies in earlier times were far from the satisfying democratic criteria of suffrage, eligibility, and apportionment. The chapter gives attention to the Estates-General, which served a valuable function in preparing legislative reforms during the three centuries of their effective existence. It also points out the most important concession the Estates-General demanded of the king in exchange for consent to taxation was the achievement of constitutional status.

Language Assessment for Children With a Range of Neurodevelopmental Disorders Across Four Languages in South Africa

Purpose The purpose of this study is (a) to examine the applicability of a culturally and linguistically adapted measure to assess the receptive and expressive language skills of children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) in South Africa and then (b) to explore the contributions of 2 additional language measures. Method In Part 1, 100 children with NDD who spoke Afrikaans, isiZulu, Setswana, or South African English were assessed on the culturally and linguistically adapted Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL). Clinicians independently rated the children's language skills on a 3-point scale. In Part 2, the final 20 children to be recruited participated in a caregiver-led interaction, after which the caregiver completed a rating scale about their perceptions of their children's language. Results Performance on the MSEL was consistent with clinician-rated child language skills. The 2 additional measures confirmed and enriched the description of the child's performance on the MSEL. Conclusions The translated MSEL and the supplemental measures successfully characterize the language profiles and related skills in children with NDD in multilingual South Africa. Together, these assessment tools can serve a valuable function in guiding the choice of intervention and also may serve as a way to monitor progress.

Il Padrino's dilemma: a simple model of Mafia decision making

The major threat to security in the 21st century appears to come from ' ungoverned spaces ' – areas where governmental control is weak or contested by clans, gangs or terrorist organizations. In a situation where trust in government is weak, the Mafia provides the service of enforcing transactions and protection. The paper builds a model to explain why, even though the Mafia appears to fulfill a valuable function, namely to provide contract enforcement when state support for that is weak, it is nevertheless so destructive. The reason, I suggest, is not simply that the Mafia is a private supplier of a public good (trust) but that it also supplies a public bad (distrust). The Mafia supplies trust by enforcing contracts but it also has to prevent that trust from spreading to those who do not pay. To stop this, the Mafia also supplies distrust. So the Mafia leader always has a choice between two ways of making profits: to supply trust, or to supply distrust. This is Il Padrino's dilemma. The next and crucial point is that trust tends to get undervalued and distrust overvalued by Mafia leaders. Among the reasons for this are that trust is fragile, while distrust is durable, combined with the peculiar 'ownership' structure of the Mafia, which is that the reputation of the organization cannot be capitalized and sold. So the Mafia leader oversupplies distrust and neglects the damages this does to the society in which it operates. This distortion in Il Padrino's thinking—the undervaluation of trust and overvaluation of distrust relative to their social values—partly explains why the Mafia is so destructive, and why areas where their control is strong tend to remain poor.

Immunohistochemistry as a Practical Tool in Molecular Pathology

Context.—Molecular genetics is playing an increasingly important role in patient care and pathology practice. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is a valuable and practical tool employed by most pathologists on a regular basis. Objective.—To highlight select examples of how IHC may be used in the realm of molecular diagnostics. Data Sources.—Select sources on IHC relating to tumor subtyping, hereditary cancer screening, and treatment-response prediction are reviewed. These represent some of the areas in which IHC can be employed by anatomic pathologists to optimize patient care and further inform molecular testing. Conclusion.—In the emerging era of personalized medicine, IHC continues to serve a valuable function, complementing and enhancing other molecular techniques.

Islamic Values in Spatial Function of Javanese Traditional Architecture

<p><em>Learn from the past is important thing as based for the next step. Learn past architecture to gain positive values can be used as guidelines to design better architectural works. Javanese traditional architecture is one of local architecture from the past which has positive values, even if it is done deeper study; it has Islamic values which can be used as principles in the process of Islamic architectural design. To achieve Islamic values in spatial pattern Javanese traditional architecture can be done through exploration and reviewing Javanese traditional architectural space afterward it is associated with Islamic values which are relevant with Al Qur’an and sunnah prophet. In fact is the spatial pattern in Javanese traditional architecture arrayed with beauty and also has Islamic valuable function. Those Islamic values are 1) high esteem guest (pendopo) through providing wide and comfortable living room; 2) create divider (pringgitan) which separate between living room and main room so that the privation can be kept; 3) separation the bed room (gandok kiwo and gandok tengen) between parents and their children who are going mature and also between boys and girls; 4) provide praying room (senthong tengah) to pray as family education and also as a place to pray to the God.</em></p>

NOTATION AS LIBERATION

This paper, originally the keynote address at a conference on notation in contemporary music held at Goldsmiths, University of London, in October 2013, examines the relationship between notation and improvisation in today's music. Starting from the position that improvisation is a method of composition, and that the two are in no way opposites, the author reflects on his dual practice as composer of often complexly notated scores and an improvising musician. The title subverts the familiar claim that it is improvisation that liberates the musician from the supposed tyranny of fixed notation, suggesting instead that notation may serve a valuable function in suggesting possible directions or points of focus in free improvisation.

Courting the Cerebellum: Early Organological and Phrenological Views of Sexuality

Although phrenology has begun to receive serious attention as a doctrine of mind, as popular science, as part of medical history, as a vehicle for social and ideological interests, and as an important component of American and European (especially British) culture in the early nineteenth century, there is one aspect of it which has evaded the eye of contemporary historians.’ This is the place within phrenology of the understanding of human sexuality. This is a subject of manifest general historical interest, and one whose neglect by scholars seems all the more striking once it is recognized that phrenologists themselves often judged it the most crucial, the best evidenced, and the most impressive part of their system of beliefs. In turning for the first time to phrenological attitudes to sex, my objective in what follows is not to offer an exhaustive treatment but rather to set down the broad lines of development followed by organological and phrenological doctrines. It is hoped that this will encourage and enable historians to consider the subject in further detail and from other perspectives. Other topics of research may also be suggested by the material that is presented here. For example, if phrenology was as important in the early decades of the nineteenth century as is now widely accepted, and if the views of sexual instinct within the theory and practice of phrenology were of the kind which I shall suggest, then it may be that our general attitudes to sexuality during the period under consideration stand in need of reassessment. This is an issue to which I hope to devote a further article; for the moment, a presentation of materials within a mainly expository framework may serve a valuable function.

Industrial Location and Physical Planning in Pakistan

The subject of industrial location, as an aspect of the economic development of the country, is one to which frequent references have been made in recent years by government officials and by the writers of newspaper editorials. During the period of the First Five Year Plan, the burden of such references was generally to the effect that further industrialization should be fostered in backward areas and that it should be discouraged or actually banned in Karachi, Lahore and other cities believed to be overcrowded or vulnerable from a defence point of view. More recently, the desire for the dispersal of industry and for the provision of jobs in less developed areas has led to the espousal of industrial estates as a means of solving the industrial location problem1. The concern of officials and of editors with the overconcentration of manufacturing#in a few cities and with the lack of geographic balance in the location of industrial investments is well founded. The problem is a serious one in Pakistan, as well as in almost all countries in which a substantial amount of industrialization has taken place. However, it does not lend itself to simple solutions such as the banning of further investments in certain of the most advanced areas or the proliferation of industrial estates in backward, economically stagnant, or out-of-the-way towns. To say this is not to criticize the use of industrial estates as a method of channeling investment. These estates have a valuable function to perform if employed in conjunction with other tools of investment promotion and as a part of a systematic approach to the location of new industrial activity.

The Tzyjyh Tongjiann Kaoyih and the Sources for the History of the period 730–763

Western scholars have, on the whole, neglected the Tzyjyh Tongjiann Kaoyih. Its existence and its importance as a land-mark in Chinese historiography have been briefly mentioned by several, but none, so far as I am aware, has seriously used it. Chinese scholars have, as one would expect, used it a good deal. Nevertheless, they have generally confined themselves to drawing on it for the elucidation of particular points. While this was undoubtedly the purpose for which it was originally intended, it can have for the modern student another very valuable function. By a careful analysis and comparison of the different entries, it is possible to get a great deal of other-wise unobtainable information about the sources of the Tongjiann and their interrelation.To undertake such an analysis for the whole of the Tongjiann or even for the whole of the Tarng dynasty would be a task far beyond the scope of the present article. I shall, in fact, confine myself largely to the period 730–763 though I may occasionally step beyond those limits. This period is chosen because it includes the careers of An Luhshan and Shyy Syming , which I am engaged in studying. This short period, however, comprises about one-seventh of the whole Kaoyih.Forty-eight works are quoted in this part of the Kaoyih, twenty-two of which appear to be still extant. They range in size and importance from the Jiow Tarngshu to a poem by Lii Bor . I shall first list some of the more important of these, giving in each case notes, whether derived from the Kaoyih or from some other source, on the origin and nature of the work.