Investigation of Bioactivity Degradation During Storage of Sour Cherry (Prunus cerasus L.) Peel Extract.

INTRODUCTION: Limited number of researches in the literature have been reported to examine degradation stability by regression methods. Monitoring storage stability of plant extracts containing phytochemicals has become a special field. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop model equations to examine the stability of total phenolic material (TPM) and total anthocyanin (TA) in the sour cherry peel extract under several conditions, such as keeping the samples in a freezer (-20°C), refrigerator (4°C) and room temperature (25°C) conditions. In addition, two types of ambient conditions (under dark and light, respectively) were applied to observe the effect of sunlight on oxidation. METHODS: The storage stability was monitored in terms of TPM and TA. 8 different polynomial regression equations were produced for the data obtained under each condition in order to define the deterioration of the TPM and TA during 60 days of the storage. RESULTS: Keeping the samples in the light at ambient conditions was the least efficient for stability (~10 days), while the shelf life of the product could have been quite long with the storage in the freezer after opening the package of the product. CONCLUSIONS: The most suitable condition for both TPM and TA has been determined as -20°C with the calculation of degradation days as 157 and 115 (R^2 = 0.9874 / 0.9265, and average error rates = 0.207097% / 0.119541%).

A tablet game or training booklet? Two methods for evaluating symptom management and quality-of-life of children receiving chemotherapy.

PURPOSE: In chemotherapy process, the innovative and educational roles of nurses come to the forefront so that children can manage the symptoms they will encounter and thus increase their quality-of-life. Therefore, a tablet game was developed by the authors of this study to evaluate the effect of training children aged 10-16 who receive chemotherapy by a tablet game and a booklet on symptom management and quality-of-life. METHODS: This was a non-randomized pre and post-test control group study. The study sample consisted of 50 children (game: 25; booklet: 25) who met the inclusion criteria and hospitalized between February 2017-July 2018 in two hospitals' Paediatric Haematology-Oncology Units. Data collection tools consisted of a child evaluation form, Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale, KINDL-Cancer Module, a tablet game, and booklet. RESULTS: When groups were evaluated within themselves after the intervention, the decrease of disturbance level of symptoms at the game group was higher than the booklet group (p:.004). Before the intervention, there was not any difference in the quality-of-life mean between groups (p < .05). After the intervention quality-of-life total (p:.000), mental (p:.030), and treatment (p:.009) subscale means were statistically significantly less at game group than booklet group. CONCLUSIONS: Both interventions were effective for symptom management, and they were not superior to each other, but the quality-of-life was higher in the game group.

New stability results for Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy Cohen-Grossberg neural networks with multiple delays.

This work focuses on global asymptotic stability of Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy Cohen-Grossberg neural networks with multiple time delays. By using the standard Lyapunov stability techniques and nonsingular M-matrix condition of matrices together with employing the nonlinear Lipschitz activation functions, a new easily verifiable sufficient criterion is obtained to guarantee global asymptotic stability of the Cohen-Grossberg neural network model which is represented by a Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model. A constructive numerical example is studied to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed theoretical results. This numerical example is also used to make a comparison between the global stability condition obtained in this study and some of previously published global stability results. This comparison reveals that the condition we propose establishes a novel and alternative stability result for Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy Cohen-Grossberg neural networks of this class.