BACKGROUND Research was carried out into agricultural and domestic-handicraft uses in folk traditions in the Tyrrhenian sector of the Basilicata region (southern Italy), as it is typically representative of ethnobotanical applications in the Mediterranean area. From the point of view of furnishing a botanical support for the study of local "material culture" data was collected through field int...

The immunostimulatory effects of methanolic extract from Pulicaria crispa were investigated in mice before and after infection with Schistosoma mansoni. Mice were subjected for daily intra-peritoneal injection by the extract (33 ng/mouse) for 10 successive days followed by infecting every mouse with 100 S. mansoni cercariae. Treatment with the extract induced significant increase (p < 0.05) in ...

Trypanocidal activity was found in the volatile oil of the Young leaves of Nepeta cataria L. which has been extracted by diethyl ether and analyzed by GC and GC/MS. Four compounds in the oil of N. cataria, representing 97.53% of the oil were identified. The oil was enriched of monoterpenes with α- citral (51.95%) as the major compound. Other main compounds were β- citronellol (9.03%), geraniol ...

A differential-scanning-calorimetric study of the thermal denaturation of a sea-anemone (Radianthus macrodactylus) 8 kDa cytolytic toxin was carried out. The calorimetric traces were found to be irreversible and scan-rate-dependent under the experimental conditions employed. Scan-rate-dependent thermograms were explained in terms of a two-state kinetic model N k -->D, where k is a first-order k...