Oxalic acid is found in dietary sources (such as coffee, tea, and chocolate) or is produced by the intestinal microflora from metabolic precursors, like ascorbic acid. In the human intestine, oxalate may combine with calcium, sodium, magnesium, or potassium to form less soluble salts, which can cause pathological disorders such as hyperoxaluria, urolithiasis, and renal failure in humans. In thi...

The use of the two closely related species, Lathyrus cicera and L. sativus, as grain legumes for human and animal consumption, dates to the Neolithic period. Due to its tolerance to harsh environmental conditions L. sativus is still used widely for human food in Ethiopia and the Indian sub-continent. Cultivation has decreased in many other regions. The grain of both L. cicera and L. sativus con...

The use of 4-amino-5-benzyl-4H-[1,2,4]triazole-3-thiol (1) as a precursor to synthesize some new biologically active heterocycles has been found to be effective. Condensation of 1 with appropriate aldehydes gave the new Schiff bases 2a, b, which either by cyclization with thioglycolic acid gave 3a, b, or by Mannich reaction using morpholine gave 4a, b. Reaction of 1 with different halogen compo...

The seeds and one to three years old plants of Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer) were analyzed for their free amino acid contents. The neuro-excitatory beta-ODAP (beta-N-oxalyl-L-alpha,beta-diaminopropionic acid), suggested to be the cause of the crippling neurolathyrism, was the major component in the seed extract (70% of the total free amino acids detected) and showed the highest conce...

A new compound, bis[2-(methoxycarbonyl)phenyl]oxalate, made from methyl salicylate (oil of wintergreen) was found to be an excellent replacement for the typical halogen or nitro substituted oxalate esters used in peroxyoxa!ate chemiluminescence demonstrations. The compound is easily prepared and has good solubility in organic solvents such as ethy l acetate which is an environmentally friendly ...

Herbicides (benzodiazepinediones), insecticides (dioxatricyclododecenes) and larvicides (N-oxalyl derivatives of tebufenozide) have been quantitatively investigated to explore the relationship between the molecular structure and their biological activity using molecular operating environment (MOE) software. The study provides good predictive models, cross-validated by leave-out-one method (Loo)...

Siglecs (sialic acid binding Ig-like lectins) are transmembrane receptors for sialylated glycoconjugates that modulate cellular interactions and signalling events in the haematopoietic, immune and nervous systems. Siglec-7 is a structural prototype for the recently described family of immune inhibitory CD33-related siglecs and is predominantly expressed on natural killer cells and monocytes, as...