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The article focuses on a study which determines the antibacterial stearolactone, rhizobialide, isolated from Glycyrrhiza uralensis. The endophytic rhizobium was inoculated into an Erlenmeyer flask and was mixed into a culture medium to allow fermentation and isolation of metabolite. The study explored that the occurrence of cyclodipeptide in a species of terrestrial endophytic rhizobia in licorice.

The article presents a study which examines the chemical constituents of Helianthus annuus L., an allelopathic cultivar sunflower in China. It discusses the isolation and characterization of the eight compounds from the isolated methanolic extracts of the Helianthus annuus L. leaves. It states that the leaves were collected in Wuzhong City, Ningxia Province and were identified by Mr. Z. H. Wu at Northwest Institute of Botany in Yangling, Shaanxi Province.

Fermentation technology was used to prepare the acaí (Euterpe oleracea) fermentation liquid. The optimal fermentation parameters included a strain ratio of Lactobacillus paracasei: Leuconostoc mesenteroides: Lactobacillus plantarum = 0.5:1:1.5, a fermentation time of 6 days, and a nitrogen source supplemental level of 2.5%. In optimal conditions, the ORAC value of the fermentation liquid reached the highest value of 273.28 ± 6.55 μmol/L Trolox, which was 55.85% higher than the raw liquid. In addition, the FRAP value of the acaí, as well as its scavenging ability of DPPH, hydroxyl, and ABTS free radicals, increased after fermentation. Furthermore, after fermentation treatment, the microstructure, basic physicochemical composition, amino acid composition, γ‐aminobutyric acid, a variety of volatile components, and so on have changed. Therefore, fermentation treatment can significantly improve the nutritional value and flavor of the acaí. This provides a theoretical basis for the comprehensive utilization of acaí. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In agriculture, aquaculture technologies such as precise feeding, fish identification and fishing based on underwater machine vision all rely on the analysis of underwater images. However, due to the scatting and attenuation of the illumination in the real-world underwater environment, turbid underwater images are inevitably degraded, limiting their applicability in many vision tasks. In this paper, we present an unsupervised deep learning framework, called Underwater Loop Enhancement Network (ULENet), to improve the quality of turbid underwater images. We first propose an underwater dataset construction scheme and construct the dataset on which the network proposed above is trained. The underwater dataset contains images of three different scenes: lake and reservoir scene data (no label), pool scene data (weakly correlated label), and laboratory scene data (strongly correlated label). Then we propose a loop enhancement structure that uses the approximate candidates as labels and improves the visual quality of the image through the iterative training process. We formulate a new underwater visual perception loss function that evaluates the perceptual image quality based on its color, contrast, saturation and clarity. During the training process, a more realistic, higher-contrast, and clearer underwater image is gradually generated. Qualitative and quantitative evaluations show that the proposed method can effectively enhance image clarity. Moreover, the enhanced images are applied to several vision tasks to achieve better results, such as edge detection, key point matching, fish target detection and saliency prediction etc. • Underwater Loop Enhancement Network (ULENet), to improve the quality of turbid underwater images. • Lake and reservoir scene data, pool scene data, and laboratory scene data. • Our method can effectively improve the visual perception on the above datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: From an acid hydrolysate of the crude saponins of Gynostemma pentaphyllum, three triterpenes, including a new compound (23S)-3β-hydroxydammar-20,24-dien-21-oic acid 21,23-lactone (1) and two known aglycons (20S, 23R)-3β,20β-dihydroxydamma-24-dien-21-oic acid 21,23-lactone (2) and (20S, 24S)-20,24-epoxydammarane-3β,12β,25-triol (3), were isolated. Their structures were established on the basis of extensive spectral evidence (HR-ESI-MS, IR, 1D and 2D-NMR experiments). In bioactive assays in vitro, compound 1 was found to have potent cytotoxicity against the human breast cancer cells MDA-MB-435, whereas compounds 2 and 3 exhibited modest inhibitory activity toward porcine pancreatic lipase. The results indicated that acid treatment of G. pentaphyllum extract could produce diverse structures with interesting bioactivity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article discusses the study of on Euonymus alatus' triterpenes and their cytotoxic activity. It says that the column chromatographic (CC) ethyl acetate (EtOAc) isolation of Euonymus alatus' root bark produced eight triterpenes including oleanic acid, wilforlide, and friedelin. It tells that compound 1 was characterized as white amorphous powder while compound 4 was isolated as crystal. It adds that myoblast transfer therapy (MTT) assay shows the cytotoxic activity of compounds from 1 to 8.