Endothelial dysfunction/reduced nitric oxide bioavailability is associated with worse plasma leakage in dengue patients and occurs early in the course of the disease. Endothelial dysfunction correlates with lower plasma l-arginine and higher arginase-1 levels.

Many national exposure programmes have been performed in tropical and subtropical climates during the last 50 years. However, ambitious programmes involving more than a few countries are scarce. In this paper a recently formed network of test sites is described involving 12 test sites in Asia (India,

BackgroundWound healing has being extensively investigated over the world. Healing impairment is caused by many reasons including increasing of free-radicals-mediated damage, delaying in granulation tissue formation, reducing in angiogenesis and decreasing in collagen reorganization. These facts consequently lead to chronic wound healing. Piper betle Linn (Betle) leaves have been folklore used as an ingredient of drugs for cutaneous wound treatment. However, the effect of betle leaf on wound healing is not yet well elucidated. In this study, we aimed to investigate the healing efficacy of methanol leaf extract of Piper betle Linn on proliferation of fibroblast NIH3T3 cells as well as full-thickness burn and excision wounds in swiss mice.MethodsScratch wound healing assays were conducted to examine the effects of betle leaf extract on healing activity of fibroblast cells. Burn and excision wounds on swiss mouse skins were created for investigating the wound healing progress caused by the betle leaf extract. Malondialdehyde (MDA) was also evaluated to examine the products of lipid hydroperoxide (LPO) under conditions of with or without betle leaf extract treatment.ResultsThe results of this study showed that Piper betle Linn leaf extract in methanol increased proliferation of NIH3T3 cells and promoted wound healing in vitro and in vivo with both burn wound and excision wound models. In addition, this extract significant decreased level of malondialdehyde (MDA) in liver of treated-mice compared with that in non-treated mice.ConclusionsOur results suggest that Piper betle Linn can be used as an ingredient in developing natural origin drugs for treatment of cutaneous wounds.

Physical properties of a nano structure are dramatically affected by its surface reconstruction and quantum confinement. For a core/shell structured nanowire (NW), the core/shell interface also plays a key role. The effects induced solely by the surface reconstruction can be estimated by using a reference model in which the dangling bonds on the NW's surface are saturated by a number of pseudo hydrogen atoms with fractional charge. We present in this paper a first principles study on the role of the surface reconstruction in several series of gallium nitride/ aluminum nitride core/shell structured NWs. We also show that the model of pseudo hydrogen atoms does suppress the effects of surface reconstruction on both structural and electronic properties of the NWs, thus the model can be used to estimate the role of surface reconstruction.

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Vietnam is situated in the wet tropical zone; thus, atmospheric conditions are characterized by high temperatures and a long time of wetness (TOW). In addition, the salt air coming in from the sea causes a high chloride concentration in coastal areas. Furthermore, Vietnam is a developing country, which means that air pollution is increasing with the development of industry. These factors result in significant damage to materials by atmospheric corrosion. In this report, the results of a recent study on the corrosion of carbon steel and zinc-galvanized steel at 6-8 testing sites in Vietnam over 10 recent years (1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005) are focused on as well as the effects of environmental factors on atmospheric corrosion. The results showed that the corrosion of carbon steel is dominated by TOW, whereas zinc-galvanized-steel corrosion strongly depends on the chloride ion concentration in the air. The corrosion losses of both carbon-and zinc-galvanized steel fit the power model well with high correlation coefficients. In addition, the characteristics of the Vietnamese climate are introduced in the form of distribution maps of temperature (T), relative humidity (RH), total rainfall and TOW. A relationship between TOW, T and RH was found that enabled the calculation of TOW from T and RH data, which are available at meteorological stations. Finally, atmospheric corrosivity is determined on the basis of data on TOW, Cl À and SO 2 concentrations, and the carbon steel corrosion rate. It is shown that in Vietnam, TOW is so long that the corrosion rate of carbon steel is in the C 3 category; nevertheless, Cl À and SO 2 concentrations in the atmosphere are not high. r