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Previous and recent literature acquisitions suggested that cultured calli are an efficient and meaningful model to investigate the extent and fate of prenylation of phenylpropanoid cores in plants belonging to the Rutaceae and Apiaceae families upon administration of putative biosynthetic precursors. To this concern, in the present manuscript, we investigated the effect of supplementation of ferulic acid and umbelliferone on the biosynthesis of their oxyprenylated counterparts in Ferulago campestris (Besser) Grecescu (Fam. Apiaceae) cultured calli. Dried plant biomass material has been extracted by an ultrasound-assisted extraction with EtOH. O-prenyl secondary metabolites, namely 3,3-dimethylallyloxy, geranyloxy, and farnesyloxy derivatives of both ferulic acid and umbelliferone, were identified and quantified by HPLC/DAD analyses. Supplementation with ferulic acid was the only treatment providing appreciable results. Quite surprisingly, its addition to cultured calli did not affect the formation of its oxyprenylated phytochemicals but boosted the biosynthesis of umbelliferone and its farnesyloxy-derivative umbrelliprenin. The findings reported herein enforce and underline the role of ferulic acid as an elicitor of selected classes of secondary metabolites in apiaceous species, as recently observed. In addition to these results, a novel hitherto unknown metabolite from F. campestris, namely 7-[[(2E)-7-hydroxy-3,7-dimethyl-2-octen-1-yl]oxy]-2H-1-benzopyran-2-one, was characterized by NMR and LC–MS analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The debate on the purpose of corporations has intensified over the past decade, compelling businesses to reassess their societal roles. To effectively integrate sustainability into corporate strategies, for-profit firms are increasingly encouraged to adopt a pro-social purpose (SP). However, adopting and integrating an SP is a substantial shift that necessitates an internal push from corporate actors. In particular, due to its function of strategic decision-making, the board of directors represents a pivotal player in promoting the adoption of an SP. This research delves into the impact of board characteristics on the likelihood of adopting an SP in for-profit firms. We examined 580 European firms employing propensity score matching and logistic regression methodologies. Our findings offer initial insights on the effect of the board composition on adopting an SP. In particular, we found that cultivating the directors' network with employees, fostering gender and age diversity, and welcoming highly qualified directors on board are key factors in facilitating the adoption and implementation of an SP in EU for-profit firms. Our study represents the first attempt to quantitatively examine the relationship between the board and SP. By doing so, we contribute to the theoretical advancement of the complementarity of corporate governance and corporate purpose. Moreover, we encourage practitioners to accrue awareness of the board characteristics that facilitate the adoption of an SP within their firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Oxyprenylated secondary metabolites of plant, fungal, and microbial origin have emerged as biologically active natural compounds with a great potential for the next future. While originally obtained from the respective sources merely by conventional techniques of the phytochemical practice like maceration, percolation, and Soxhlet extractions, during the last five years novel and alternative experimental protocols to get such chemicals in higher yields and purity degree and/or in form of enriched phytopreparations have been developed. Such new processes include ultrasounds and microwaves assisted extractions, use of auxiliary agents like deep eutectic solvents and QuEChERS, employment of novel extractive solvents like supercritical CO2 and subcritical butane, accelerated solvent extractions, and finally extractions in the heterogeneous phase using solid supports. All these new methodologies proved to be very powerful and efficient in terms of yields and selectivity in concentrating classes of secondary metabolites from the respective matrices, comparing favorably to the already and widespread "classic" extraction techniques. All the developed processes can be framed in a green chemical context stating the employment of nontoxic, non-pollutant, environmentally friend, recyclable, easy to handle and to store solvents and reagents. The aim of this review article is to make a detailed survey of these alternative extraction processes for oxyprenylated secondary metabolites providing not only the most relevant examples of the recent literature, but also concrete suggestions and addresses to accomplish future research activities in the same field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the coupling from the past implementation of the random-cluster heat-bath process, and study its random running time, or coupling time. We focus on hypercubic lattices embedded on tori, in dimensions one to three, with cluster fugacity at least one. We make a number of conjectures regarding the asymptotic behaviour of the coupling time, motivated by rigorous results in one dimension and Monte Carlo simulations in dimensions two and three. Amongst our findings, we observe that, for generic parameter values, the distribution of the appropriately standardized coupling time converges to a Gumbel distribution, and that the standard deviation of the coupling time is asymptotic to an explicit universal constant multiple of the relaxation time. Perhaps surprisingly, we observe these results to hold both off criticality, where the coupling time closely mimics the coupon collector's problem, and also at the critical point, provided the cluster fugacity is below the value at which the transition becomes discontinuous. Finally, we consider analogous questions for the single-spin Ising heat-bath process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We prove rapid mixing of the worm process for the zero-field ferromagnetic Ising model, on all finite connected graphs, and at all temperatures. As a corollary, we obtain a fully-polynomial randomized approximation scheme for the Ising susceptibility, and for a certain restriction of the two-point correlation function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a classical dilute particle system in a large box with pair-interaction given by a Lennard-Jones-type potential. The inverse temperature is picked proportionally to the logarithm of the particle density. We identify the free energy per particle in terms of a variational formula and show that this formula exhibits a cascade of phase transitions as the temperature parameter ranges from zero to infinity. Loosely speaking, the particle system separates into spatially distant components in such a way that within each phase all components are of the same size, which is the larger the lower the temperature. The main tool in our proof is a new large deviation principle for sparse point configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consider a linearly edge-reinforced random walk defined on the b-ary tree, b≥70. We prove the strong law of large numbers for the distance of this process from the root. We give a sufficient condition for this strong law to hold for general edge-reinforced random walks and random walks in a random environment. We also provide a central limit theorem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]