Chemical Constituents of Rhododendron lepidotum
Two new coumarin glycosides, 7-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl-8-methoxybenzopyranone (1) and 7-hydroxy-8-O-β-glycosylbenzopyranone ((2), are reported along with the isolation of 7,8-dihydroxy coumarin (daphnetin) from Rhododendron lepidotum (aerial part).
Acute effect of 3β-hidroxihop-22(29)ene on insulin secretion is mediated by GLP-1, potassium and calcium channels for the glucose homeostasis
The effect of 3β-hidroxihop-22(29)ene (3-BHO) on insulin and glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) secretion as well as the mechanism of action of the compound in pancreatic islet on glucose homeostasis was investigated. The data from in vivo treatment show that 3-BHO significantly reduces the hyperglycemia by increasing the insulin and GLP-1 secretion, as well as by accumulating hepatic glycogen in hyperglycemic rats. In rat pancreatic β-cell, 3-BHO stimulates the glucose uptake, insulin vesicles translocation to the plasma membrane and thus the insulin secretion through the involvement of potassium channels (ATP- and Ca(2+)-dependent K(+) channels) and calcium channels (L-type voltage-dependent calcium channels (L-VDCC)). Furthermore, this study also provides evidence for a crosstalk between intracellular high calcium concentration, PKA and PKC in the signal transduction of 3-BHO to stimulate insulin secretion. In conclusion, 3-BHO diminishes glycaemia, stimulates GLP-1 secretion and potentiates insulin secretion and increase hepatic glycogen content. Moreover, this triterpene modulates calcium influx characterizing ATP-K(+), Ca(2+)-K(+) and L-VDCC channels-dependent pathways as well as PKA and PKC activity in pancreatic islets underlying the signaling of 3-BHO for the secretory activity and contribution on glucose homeostasis.
Multi-directional spatial error concealment using adaptive edge thresholding
In this paper, a new method for spatial concealment of missing areas in image and video signals transmitted over error prone infrastructures, is presented. The concealment process is performed in three steps. First, a novel technique is used to estimate the significant edges of missing areas after performing a directional edge analysis on the correctly received neighboring blocks of the missing areas. This technique uses the moments of the neighboring edge magnitudes to obtain an adaptive threshold for rejecting non-significant directions. Second, based on the predicted significant directions, an approximation is obtained for each missing pixel. Finally, for each pixel, we compute a weighted average by using two edge correspondence measures as weighting factors. Moreover, the adaptive thresholding of the edges let us include as many edges as necessary in the interpolation process. Experiments show that the proposed method outperforms the previous state of the art methods based on both subjective and objective measures.