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Background: Cardamom is a well-known spice in Indian subcontinent, used in culinary and traditional medicine practices since ancient times. The current investigation was untaken to evaluate the potential benefit of cardamom powder supplementation in high carbohydrate high fat (HCHF) diet induced obese rats. Method: Male Wistar rats (28 rats) were divided into four different groups such as Control, Control + cardamom, HCHF, HCHF + cardamom. High carbohydrate and high fat (HCHF) diet was prepared in our laboratory. Oral glucose tolerance test, organs wet weight measurements and oxidative stress parameters analysis as well as liver marker enzymes such as alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activities were assayed on the tissues collected from the rats. Plasma lipids profiles were also measured in all groups of animals. Moreover, histological staining was also performed to evaluate inflammatory cells infiltration and fibrosis in liver. Results: The current investigation showed that, HCHF diet feeding in rats developed glucose intolerance and increased peritoneal fat deposition compared to control rats. Cardamom powder supplementation improved the glucose intolerance significantly (p > 0.05) and prevented the abdominal fat deposition in HCHF diet fed rats. HCHF diet feeding in rats also developed dyslipidemia, increased fat deposition and inflammation in liver compared to control rats. Cardamom powder supplementation significantly prevented the rise of lipid parameters (p > 0.05) in HCHF diet fed rats. Histological assessments confirmed that HCHF diet increased the fat deposition and inflammatory cells infiltration in liver which was normalized by cardamom powder supplementation in HCHF diet fed rats. Furthermore, HCHF diet increased lipid peroxidation, decreased antioxidant enzymes activities and increased advanced protein oxidation product level significantly (p > 0.05) both in plasma and liver tissue which were modulated by cardamom powder supplementation in HCHF diet fed rats. HCHF diet feeding in rats also increased the ALT, AST and ALP enzyme activities in plasma which were also normalized by cardamom powder supplementation in HCHF diet fed rats. Moreover, cardamom powder supplementation ameliorated the fibrosis in liver of HCHF diet fed rats. Conclusion: This study suggests that, cardamom powder supplementation can prevent dyslipidemia, oxidative stress and hepatic damage in HCHF diet fed rats.

Abstract.A graph is 1-planar if it can be drawn in the plane such that each edge is crossed at most once. In general, 1-planar graphs do not admit straightline drawings. We show that every 3-connected 1-planar graph has a straight-line drawing on an integer grid of quadratic size, with the exception of a single edge on the outer face that has one bend. The drawing can be computed in linear time from any given 1-planar embedding of the graph.

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Highly conductive and transparent aluminum-doped zinc oxide thin films have been prepared from the solution of zinc acetate and aluminum nitrate in ethanol by the sol–gel process. The effect of changing the aluminum-to-zinc ratio from 0 to 5 at. % and annealing temperature from 0 °C to 700 °C in air has been investigated. The resistivities of thin films were measured as a function of annealing temperature and also as a function of aluminum dopant concentration in the solution. As-deposited films have high resistivity and high optical transmission. Annealing of the as-deposited films in air leads to a substantial reduction in resistivity. The films have a minimum value of resistivity of 1.5×10−4 Ω cm for 0.8 at. % aluminum-doped zinc oxide and a maximum transmission of about 91% when deposited on glass substrates. X-ray diffraction measurements employing Cu Kα radiation were performed to determine the crystallinity of the ZnO:Al films which showed that the films were polycrystalline with a hexagonal structure when annealed at 500 °C.

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Cartograms are maps in which areas of geographic regions, such as countries and states, appear in proportion to some variable of interest, such as population or income. Cartograms are popular visualizations for geo-referenced data that have been used for over a century to illustrate patterns and trends in the world around us. Despite the popularity of cartograms, and the large number of cartogram types, there are few studies evaluating the effectiveness of cartograms in conveying information. Based on a recent task taxonomy for cartograms, we evaluate four major types of cartograms: contiguous, non-contiguous, rectangular, and Dorling cartograms. We first evaluate the effectiveness of these cartogram types by quantitative performance analysis (time and error). Second, we collect qualitative data with an attitude study and by analyzing subjective preferences. Third, we compare the quantitative and qualitative results with the results of a metrics-based cartogram evaluation. Fourth, we analyze the results of our study in the context of cartography, geography, visual perception, and demography. Finally, we consider implications for design and possible improvements.

a) (b) (c) Figure 1: 2004 US Presidential elections: (a) geographically accurate map, (b) diffusion cartogram, (c) rectangular cartogram. AbstractCartograms are used to visualize geographically distributed data by scaling the regions of a map (e.g., US states) such that their areas are proportional to some data associated with them (e.g., population). Thus the cartogram computation problem can be considered as a map deformation problem where the input is a planar polygonal map M and an assignment of some positive weight for each region. The goal is to create a deformed map M , where the area of each region realizes the weight assigned to it (no cartographic error) while the overall map remains readable and recognizable (e.g., the topology, relative positions and shapes of the regions remain as close to those before the deformation as possible). Although several such measures of cartogram quality are well-known, different cartogram generation methods optimize different features and there is no standard set of quantitative metrics. In this paper we define such a set of seven quantitative measures, designed to evaluate how faithfully a cartogram represents the desired weights and to estimate the readability of the final representation. We then study several cartogram-generation algorithms and compare them in terms of these quantitative measures.