Abstract: Medicinal plants are plants used whole or parts to prevent and cure health problems, promote and rehabilitate nature to the living population at primary, secondary and tertiary health care deliveries. In Nigeria, the use of plants at various levels of health care delivery has been in practice for many centuries past; as old as the history of human beings. These plants belong to several families including Leguminosae, Malvaceae, Mimosaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Compositae, Acanthaceae, Cannaraceae, Passifloraceae, Rutaceae, Zingiberaceae, Bombacaceae, Olacaceae, Apocynaceae, Guttiferae, Liliaceae, Sapindaceae and Combretaceae. Specific examples of the phyto-organisms are Pericopsis, Phaulopsis, Myrobalan, Pleiocarpa, Picralima, Fig, Bhadram, Akerbia, Millefoil, Bear?s breach, Copper leaf, Acalypha, Acacia, African mallow and Baobab. sThese plants are used for different medicinal purposes such as stimulant and carminative, avert fever, coughs, asthma, flatulence, helminthic and microbial problems, cancer, hypertension, leprosy, vitamin deficiency, lack of homeostasis, pox and ulcer. Purposeful

Abstract: Most of the rose species that are available in Norway are designed for a warmer climate, and the selection of roses adapted to our cold climate in the north is rather limited. Finland have for several centuries been cultivating roses adapted to different climate zones. In the botanical garden at Bioforsk Svanhovd, we have planted 13 different varieties of rose imported from Oulu, Finland in summer 2009. Five of the 13 varieties belong to the species Rosa pimpinellifolia. This is a group of hardy shubroses, which has been cultivated since the 1600s. They form 1-2 m tall shrubs, with decorative, simple leaves and leaflets densely packed freshly scented flowers. They are easily arable, and rarely attacked by diseases. Only a few varieties are preserved and cultivated today. The other roses belong to the species R. centifolia, R. harisonii, R. rugose, R. francofurtana and wild roses (Rosa spp.). At Bioforsk Svanhovd, the roses are grown in cold, northern inland climate: The aim is to monitor the rose growth and survival in the cold northern climate, to see whether they are suitable as ornamental plants in Finnmark. To evaluate this, we will record budding, foliation, flowering, fading, rose hips formation, leaf abscission, growth and any attack by disease or pests weekly throughout the growing season over a period of 3 years.

Abstract: B-cell epitope prediction facilitates the design of antibody-binding constructs for the development of novel vaccines and immunodiagnostics. This work aimed to gain insights into the problem of B-cell epitope prediction using structural energetics. Methods: Structural-energetic analysis was applied to peptide and protein antigens. A possible rate-limiting process of local epitope unfolding was considered for the cross-reaction of antipeptide antibody with protein antigen. Immunodominance was treated as a thermodynamically determined hierarchical steric-exclusion phenomenon. The algorithm thus developed was implemented as the computer program SAPPHIRE (Structural-energetic Analysis Program for Predicting Humoral Immune Response Epitopes), with the estimated affinity for antibody as the main criterion for epitope prediction. Predictions were rendered on the cross-reactivities of polyclonal antibodies to 38 peptides with 15 globular proteins of known structure and evaluated against published experimental data comprising 18 positive and 20 negative binding interactions. Results: Structural-energetic parameters could not be unambiguously assigned to cysteine in view of its capacity for disulfide bond formation. The energetic contribution of histidine could not be determined in view of the uncertainty of its protonation state at physiologic pH. The binding contexts defined by the types of participating antibodies (antipeptide or antiprotein) and antigens (peptide or protein) were all fundamentally different from one another. Predictions on genuine antibody-antigen cross-reactivity could be evaluated against empirical data only with regard to interaction between antipeptide antibody and protein antigen. Maximum areas under the receiver operator characteristic curves were approximately 0.71 either with or without consideration of immunodominance. Conclusions: 1) B-cell epitope prediction is potentially complicated by the presence of cysteine and histidine. 2) The evaluation of B-cell epitope predictions against empirical data is meaningful only if the two pertain to exactly the same types of antibody (antipeptide or antiprotein) and antigen (peptide or protein). 3) Predictions on genuine antibody-antigen cross-reactivity can be evaluated against empirical data in the case of interaction between antipeptide antibody and protein antigen. Molecular

Abstract: There is an increasing concern for the possible impact of environmental factors on genomic stability in human populations. We studied the aneuploidy-inducing capacity of pesticides of significant human exposure in cultured human cells and demonstrated that dichlorvos, an organophosphate insecticide classified as possible carcinogen, significantly induced CREST-positive micronuclei in binucleated lymphoblastoid cells (Mattiuzzo et al., 2006). To identify the mechanisms involved in the aneuploidy-inducing ability of this chemical, we investigated the influence of the drug on mitotic progression and spindle assembly. In both lymphoblasts and Hela cells Dichlorvos greatly increased mitotic index and inhibited the metaphase/anaphase transition: this resulted in a mitotic arrest at promethaphase with hyper-condensed chromosomes. Analysis of mitotic spindles and chromosome congression by immunofluorescence staining with anti- alpha tubulin and anti- Ser10 phospho H3 antibodies showed that the chemical was able to perturb spindle dynamics and chromosome behaviour. Spindle microtubules in treated cells were not organized in parallel fibres but collapsed in tubulin aggregates or formed distorted fibres that did not interact with the kinetochores. At higher doses Ser10 phospho H3-positive picnotic nuclei were associated to monopolar spindles, showing two close gamma tubulin signals. These results demonstrate that Dichlorvos mimics spindle poison effects, inducing mitotic arrest and altering the structure and the function of the mitotic apparatus in cultured human cells. In vivo analysis of mitotic progression showed that a large proportion of dichlorvos-treated cells did not progress beyond prometaphase. The few cells that completed mitosis, did so without chromatid separation producing polyploid or multinucleated cells. Finally, B tubulin in dichlorvos treated cells was heavily phoshorylated at a residue that is specific for tubulin not incorporated into microtubules (Fourest-Lieuvin et al., 2006), suggesting that the pesticide affects microtubule dynamics during mitosis. These effects of the chemical may be relevant for its potential carcinogenic activity.

Abstract: Nowadays, academic as well as industrial communities focus one part of their research and development activities around Web services technology. It seems to be a promising basis to provide a solution for inter-operability between heterogeneous environments. Web services are, usually syntactically, described with standards like (UDDI, SOAP, and WSDL). To control and secure the access to Web services recorded in various distributed data sources became during these years a challenge. Nowadays, there is not yet a defined architecture to access control when Web services are composed into a complex and virtual application. The Web services composition is the ability to provide a new functionality obtained from a combination of several Web services offered by various providers. The access control is a security policy which defines the rules of using resources in order to ensure the confidentiality (the data neither available, nor revealed to the entities unauthorized), integrity (data neither modified, nor changed during) and the availability of the data (data is accessible). A security policy must identify the objects containing sensitive information (data to access to the resources and subjects). In this paper, we propose a flexible security mechanism to virtual and semantic Web services which in one hand, it ensures the protection of Web services against unauthorized accesses, and in another hand, it resolves few conflicts which can occur when a client submits a composite request of access. We introduce a mixed mechanism which is based on XML language, semantic annotations of access rights, the controlled hierarchy of the authorisations, different degrees of sensitivity of an information and a set of access modes in order to reinforce the security of the services in Intranet and extranet. We illustrate the robustness and the efficiency of our proposed approach by the prototype implemented in java which can support different security policies.

Abstract: Water channels or water channel proteins (WCPs) are transmembrane proteins that have a specific three-dimensional structure with a pore that can be permeated by water molecules. The first WCP was discovered in the human red blood cell membrane in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, in 1985 by Bengas group. We have measured the water permeability of human red blood cells (RBCs) by a doping NMR method. We showed for the first time by NMR that the parameters characterizing diffusional water permeability are the same in RBCs and resealed ghosts and reported the largest series of determinations of water diffusional permeability of RBCs available in literature. The first water channel protein (WCP), later called aquaporin 1 (AQP1) was discovered in the RBC membrane by my group in 1985 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, reported in publications in 1986 (Benga et al., Biochemistry, 25, 1535-1538, 1986; Benga et al., Eur. J. Cell Biol., 41, 252-262, 1986) and reviewed in the following years. This discovery was achieved by specific labelling of the RBC membranes with the known water transport inhibitor 203Hg - p-chloromercuribenzenesulfonate (PCMBS). In parallel, the water permeability was measured by the doping NMR technique and the inhibition induced by PCMBS was calculated. The priority of Benga in the discovery of the first WCP was acknowledged by many outstanding scientists. We also have a world priority in the discovery of the implications of water channel proteins in epilepsy (Benga and Morariu, Nature, 265, 636-638, 1977) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (Serbu et al., Muscle & Nerve, 9, 243-247, 1986). These findings were interpreted as an expression of generalized membrane defects affecting water permeability in epilepsy and Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In recent years this idea was confirmed. Since the discovery of WCPs tremendous progress in understanding their role in physiology and pathology. Based on these advances it became clear that inhbitors of AQPs can be used as magic bullets in a variety of diseases, including cancer. The doping NMR method should be used to compare the effects of inhibitors of WCPs as magic bullets. Examples of this approach will be given.

Abstract: Primitive meteorites contain grains of stardust, i.e. ?pre-solar? grains that formed in the outflows or ejecta of stars. Among these are nanodiamonds with a mean size of ~2.6 nm and an abundance reaching up to ~0.15 % by weight. Isotopic analysis of single diamonds (some 1000 carbon atoms on average) is not feasible, but analysis of large numbers (millions or so) of diamonds reveals the presence of trace noble gases, notably xenon, with an unusual isotopic composition. The latter is reminiscent of the p- and r-processes of nucleosynthesis that are thought to occur during supernova explosions. There are differences in detail, however, which may indicate some unconventional types of element synthesis in stars or modification by secondary processes. Recoil loss from nanometer-sized grains during decay of unstable precursor nuclides has been suggested as an explanation, but experiments we have performed do not support this idea. Astronomical observations indicate the presence of diamonds around young stars, but have not unambiguously identified them in the interstellar medium or around evolved stars. Raman spectroscopy of nanodiamonds from the Allende meteorite has revealed a shift of the 1332 cm-1 diamond peak downward to ~1326 cm-1, but it is not clear whether this is due to origin by shock or a feature caused by small grain size. TEM observations are more in line with a CVD origin. Gases within the diamonds were probably trapped by ion implantation and occupy two different types of sites characterized by different release temperatures.