Targeting Cancer with Nano-Bullets: Curcumin, EGCG, Resveratrol and Quercetin on Flying Carpets

Aras, Aliye,Khokhar, Abdur Rehman,Qureshi, Muhammad Zahid,Silva, Marcela Fernandes,Sobczak-Kupiec, Agnieszka,Pineda, Edgardo Alfonso Gomez,Hechenleitner, Ana Adelina Winkler,Farooqi, Ammad Ahmad Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.9

It is becoming progressively more understandable that different phytochemicals isolated from edible plants interfere with specific stages of carcinogenesis. Cancer cells have evolved hallmark mechanisms to escape from death. Concordant with this approach, there is a disruption of spatiotemproal behaviour of signaling cascades in cancer cells, which can escape from apoptosis because of downregulation of tumor suppressor genes and over-expression of oncogenes. Genomic instability, intra-tumor heterogeneity, cellular plasticity and metastasizing potential of cancer cells all are related to molecular alterations. Data obtained through in vitro studies has convincingly revealed that curcumin, EGCG, resveratrol and quercetin are promising anticancer agents. Their efficacy has been tested in tumor xenografted mice and considerable experimental findings have stimulated researchers to further improve the bioavailability of these nutraceuticals. We partition this review into different sections with emphasis on how bioavailability of curcumin, EGCG, resveratrol and quercetin has improved using different nanotechnology approaches.

Anticancer Activity of Essential Oils: Targeting of Protein Networks in Cancer Cells

Aras, Aliye,Iqbal, Muhammed Javed,Naqvi, Syed Kamran-Ul-Hassan,Gercek, Yusuf Can,Boztas, Kadir,Gasparri, Maria Luisa,Shatynska-Mytsyk, Iryna,Fayyaz, Sundas,Farooqi, Ammad Ahmad Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.19

Cancer is a multifaceted and genomically complex disease and research over decades has gradually and sequentially shown that essential biological mechanisms including cell cycle arrest and apoptosis are deregulated. The benefits of essential oils from different plants have started to gain appreciation as evidenced by data obtained from cancer cell lines and xenografted mice. Encouraging results obtained from preclinical studies have attracted considerable attention and various phytochemicals have entered into clinical trials.

Importance of pumped storage hydroelectric power plant in Turkey

Aras, Egemen Techno-Press 2017 Advances in energy research Vol.5 No.3

The world began to search for new energy sources with increasing energy demand. Renewable energy sources are as hydropower important for alternative energy. Countries with high hydroelectric potentials continue to work to utilize hydroelectric power plants in the most efficient way. Pumped storage hydropower plants are an important investment to meet the growing energy needs at peak times and to store energy. Although it produces energy in many countries, pumped storage hydropower plants have not begun to be built in Turkey which has high hydroelectric potential. A new era will be opened for energy production in Turkey where a large number of pumped storage hydropower plants projects are in study phase with the construction of pumped storage hydropower plants and first nuclear power plant.

Occurrence and Antibiotic Susceptibility of Listeria Species in Turkey Meats

Aras, Zeki,Ardic, Mustafa Korean Society for Food Science of Animal Resource 2015 한국축산식품학회지 Vol.35 No.5

The aims of this study were to investigate the occurrence of Listeria species in turkey meats and to check the antimicrobial susceptibility of the isolated strains. Hundred and fifteen raw turkey meat samples were randomly collected from the supermarkets, butchers and restaurants. Strain isolation and identification were made according to the ISO11290-1 method. Antimicrobial susceptibility was determined by the standard disc diffusion method. A total of 47 Listeria spp. were isolated from 115 (40.9%) raw turkey meat samples. The isolates were distributed between L. monocytogenes (25.53%), L. innocua (34.04%), L. grayi (31.91%) and L. welshimeri (8.51%). A total of 55.3 % of Listeria spp. isolates were multi-resistant to at least 3 of the antimicrobial agent tested. The level of multi-resistance was higher in L. monocytogenes strains (66.7%) than in L. innocua (62.5%) and L. grayi (53.3%). Listeria spp. isolates were highly resistant to ampicillin, cephalothin, penicillin, meticillin, oxacillin, and trimethoprime-sulfamethoxazole. The isolates particularly L. monocytogenes are increasingly resistant to one or more antibiotics and may represent a potential risk for public health because these antibiotics are common used in treatment of listeriosis. The correct and controlled use of antibiotics in veterinary medicine is important to the emergence of resistant strains.

Vector-valued envelope functions for constructing tool swept surfaces in continuous domains

Aras Eyyup 한국CDE학회 2023 Journal of computational design and engineering Vol.10 No.2

This paper proposes the vector-valued envelope functions to describe form cutters’ swept profiles at the choice of particular motion instances. The general idea behind such a formulation is to embed the tangency constraint into the tool surface expression and form a single continuous function to describe the segmental curves whose elements lie on the envelopes. This results in skipping unnecessary calculations when no envelope-surface point is associated with the specified input data, reducing the sizeable computational burden due to repetitive constraint implementations, and most importantly, depending on the tool kinematics’ complexity, avoiding the tangency-constraint violations between successive envelope-surface points where the exact fit cannot be obtained. In this study, firstly, the NC tool surface models present in extant literature have been restructured using the four-parameter set of spheres to attain the required one-to-one correspondence between the domain and range sets of these functions, followed by excluding the tangency-constraint evaluations by introducing the systematic parameter-reduction procedures that led to the development of constraint-embedded envelope functions. Next, we introduced the branch-existence test, which allowed us to check whether these functions are continuous over closed domain intervals. Finally, we covered algorithms for implementing the functions.

Highly durable spray-coated superhydrophobic surface: Pre-anodizing and fatty acid chain length effect

Aras Omur,Enver Baydir,Bugra Akman 한국화학공학회 2022 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.39 No.3

In the study, aluminum plates were first anodized and then coated with ZnO by spray-pyrolysis method. By modification with long chain fatty acid, these surfaces demonstrate superior hydrophobicity and durability. After optimizing the anodizing time for each fatty acid, several runs were conducted by varying concentration and spray solution quantity. Comparison was made by optimizing the process parameters in which each acid showed maximum hydrophobicity. Anodized, spray coated and modified surfaces were characterized by FT-IR, XRD, SEM and topography analysis. The chemical and mechanical strength of the surfaces were explored under various extreme conditions. The highest contact angle of 164o was obtained by coating 10 minutes anodized surface with 0.4M and 15 ml ZnNO3 solution and modifying it with stearic acid. In the performed tests, it has been observed that this surface is much more durable than surfaces modified with other fatty acids.

Effects of multiple dam projects on river ecology and climate change: Çoruh River Basin, Turkey

Aras, Egemen Techno-Press 2018 Advances in environmental research Vol.7 No.2

Depending on the increased energy needs, a large number of dams have been built around the world. These dams have significant impacts on river ecology and climate change. When the climate change scenarios are examined, it is stated that the annual average temperature in Turkey will increase by 2.5-4 degrees in the future years, the south of the country will be opposed to the severe drought threat, and the northern regions will have a flood risk. In particular, it can be predicted that many dams and dam lakes built in the North of Turkey may increase the impact of climate change. In this study, the effects of the dams constructed in Çoruh basin on climate change are examined. Environmental and ecological problems of dam reservoirs have been examined. As a result of the data received from meteorological stations, it was determined that temperature and rainfall changes in the region. In this direction, solution proposal is presented.

Fractured needle as an unusual complication of the lingual nerve block: a case report

Aras Erdil,Mustafa Sami Demirsoy,Sefa Çolak 대한치과마취과학회 2022 Journal of Dental Anesthesia and Pain Medicine Vol.22 No.4

Although rare, hypodermic needle fractures can occur in the maxillofacial region. In cases of fracture, urgent intervention is required to prevent further complications. We present the case of a 37-year-old female patient with a fractured needle in the left sublingual fossa during a lingual nerve block 6 months before referral. The fragment of a 30-gauge needle was located using cone-beam computed tomography and retrieved under local anesthesia with blunt dissection. The patient recovered uneventfully, except for predictable postoperative inflammatory complications, which resolved within 2 weeks. Precautions should be implemented to prevent needle fractures, which are usually preventable. However, if the retrieval is unsuccessful, the patient should be referred to a well-equipped surgical unit without delay.

Tracing sub-surface swept profiles of tapered toroidal end mills between level cuts

Eyyup Aras 한국CDE학회 2019 Journal of computational design and engineering Vol.6 No.4

Development of closed-form solutions and algorithms for constructing sub-surface swept profiles (SWP) of toroidal and conical bodies is presented in this paper. While the problem of identifying the entire SWP of such surfaces has been extensively investigated in extant studies, construction of subsurface SWPs has rarely been addressed despite the subject being of great significance to machining process employing nonstandard-shaped NC tools. Torus shapes considered in extant literature are restricted to the fourth quadrant of a tube cross section. In industrial applications, however, profile cutters contain different regions of a toroidal surface. To identify SWP elements in the proposed study, a single analytical expres-sion in one variable has been deduced using two moving frames. The basic idea behind such a formula-tion is to employ the one-to-many strategy, which greatly reduces the computational cost and effort. Algorithms to identify feasible domains of SWP parameters at each level cut, where toroidal and conical surfaces meet, have also been proposed in this study. This is important, since cutting a tool surfaces along the rotation axis divides SWP-parameter domains into non overlapping sets of intervals that must be addressed for each tool posture. In addition, this study demonstrates that for certain tool postures, while C1 continuity between sub-surfaces is satisfied, the SWP connectivity is lost at some points. To locate these so called singular-characteristic points, some precomputation steps have been performed. Lastly, several factors affecting the smoothness of SWPs have been identified and discussed.

Experimental investigation of impact behaviour of shear deficient RC beam to column connection

Murat Aras,Tolga Yılmaz,Özlem Çalışkan,Özgür Anıl,R. Tuğrul Erdem,Turgut Kaya 국제구조공학회 2022 Structural Engineering and Mechanics, An Int'l Jou Vol.84 No.5

Reinforced concrete (RC) structures may be subjected to sudden dynamic impact loads such as explosions occurring for different reasons, the collision of masses driven by rockfall, flood, landslide, and avalanche effect structural members, the crash of vehicles to the highway and seaway structures. Many analytical, numerical, and experimental studies focused on the behavior of RC structural elements such as columns, beams, and slabs under sudden dynamic impact loads. However, there is no comprehensive study on the behavior of the RC column-beam connections under the effect of sudden dynamic impact loads. For this purpose, an experimental study was performed to investigate the behavior of RC column-beam connections under the effect of low-velocity impact loads. Sixteen RC beam-column connections with a scale of 1/3 were manufactured and tested under impact load using the drop-weight test setup. The concrete compressive strength, shear reinforcement spacing in the beam, and input impact energy applied to test specimens were taken as experimental variables. The time histories of impact load acting on test specimens, accelerations, and displacements measured from the test specimens were recorded in experiments. Besides, shear and bending crack widths were measured. The effect of experimental variables on the impact behavior of RC beam-column connections has been determined and interpreted in detail. Besides, a finite element model has been established for verification and comparison of the experimental results by using ABAQUS software. It has been demonstrated that concrete strength, shear reinforcement ratio, and impact energy significantly affect the impact behavior of RC column-beam connections.