Aflatoxins are secondary metabolites of mould Aspergillus section Flavi species. These toxins are very carcinogenic, mutagenic and teratogenic in nature. They are opportunist toxins and can exist in any food or feed commodity. Nuts are inspired worldwide for their nutritional, sensory and health promoting attributes. Aflatoxin contamination of tree nuts (almonds, pistachios and walnuts) and ground nut is a significant food safety related problem worldwide. Infect, aflatoxins were first reported in 1960’s in peanut feed. As nuts are mostly consumed mostly directly, so the chances of aflatoxin decontamination during food processing procedures are also minimized. Aflatoxin contamination can occur pre-harvest, in field, postharvest like transport, handling and storage. The lack of preharvest control of mycotoxins has made them a postharvest threat. The contamination of a single nut in a lot can lead to the deterioration of the entire lot due to proliferating mycoflora. There are a number of outbreaks reported in literature in different countries throughout the world due to the consumption of aflatoxin contaminated food and feed stuffs. No single method is currently available which can detoxify aflatoxins and eliminate fungal load responsible for aflatoxin contamination along with the guarantee of wholesomeness of all types of food commodities. The present study emphasizes on multiplication of fungal species and the formation of aflatoxins in selected nuts during storage at two different moisture levels. The second major focal point of the study was decontamination of aflatoxins, along with elimination of contaminating fungal species using physical method, gamma and ultra violet irradiation, and chemical method like citric, lactic and propionic acid in ground and tree nuts. The results of the study showed that physical methods like γ and UV radiations can effectively reduce total aflatoxin content as well as aflatoxin B1 (AFB1), the most toxic aflatoxin. The irradiation (γ and UV) also significantly reduced the contaminating mycoflora. The degradation of aflatoxins by irradiation was also kinetically evaluated and found to follow first order rate kinetics. The degradation rate constants are also reported. The advantage of using irradiation is that it does not result in the formation toxic chemical residues. Organic acids also reduced the total as well as AFB1 to permissible limits. The degradation of aflatoxins by organic acids was found to follow exponential decay function. Citric acid was more effective than lactic and propionic acids in detoxifying aflatoxins. The results revealed that lactic and propionic acids can more efficiently reduce the fungal count than citric acid. The lipid fraction, tocopherol content and free fatty acid profile of the ground and tree nuts were also estimated at different time intervals during storage. The fungal growth significantly affected the oil quality of nuts, in view of the fact that being consumed as substrate by the infecting mycoflora. The tocopherol content was not significantly affected by gamma irradiation, where as UV irradiation significantly degraded the tocopherol content following first order rate kinetics. In case of fatty acids, γ-irradiation selectively affected saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, resulting in a decrease in oxidation index, ensuring an extension of shelf life. Over all irradiation particularly gamma ray treatment proved to be effective in reducing fungal count and aflatoxin content without significantly affecting the quality of the selected food.
"شیطان تو یہی چاہتا ہے کہ شراب اور جوئے کے ذریعے تمہارے درمیان دشمنی اور بغض کے بیج ڈال دے اور تمہیں اللہ کی یاد اور نماز سے روک دے ، اب بتاؤ کہ کیا تم ان چیزوں سے باز آ جاؤ گے"۔
اس آیت میں ’’فھل انتم منتھون ‘‘ در اصل ’’انتھوا عنھا‘‘ کے معنی میں مستعمل ہے ۔
"اس کے بعد اگر یہ تمہاری بات قبول نہ کریں تو (اے لوگو) یقین کر لو کہ یہ وحی صرف اللہ کےحکم سے اتری ہےاور یہ کہ اللہ کے سوا کوئی عبادت کے لائق نہیں، تو کیا اب تم فرما بردار بنو گے"۔
جناب فلاحی کی رائے میں آیت مذکور میں ’’فھل انتم مسلمون‘‘ استفہام کے معنی میں نہیں بلکہ امر کے مفہوم میں استعمال ہوا ہے یعنی ’’اسلموا لھذا لاکتاب و آمنو ‘‘ ۔[[3]]
Sirah of the Holy Prophet ﷺ is the topic on which a lot of work has been done both in the Muslim and non-Muslim world. For Muslims it was the source of aspiration and adaptation for the practical purposes of social life while for the non-Muslims it was the source of inquisitiveness and understanding Islam as a successful religion in the past and present time. Therefore, Muslim enthusiastic interest in the biography of the Holy Prophet ﷺ developed and evolved into a regular science while the west has modified the knowledge of biography according to their own order of preference but within the same biographic precedents. Both have tried to reconstruct the biography of the Holy Prophet ﷺ historically, chronologically and logically.
Clinton Bennett is one of the western scholars who has contributed not only in the Islamic literature but also the biographic field. His work consists of numerous issues in Islam. Whatever he has learned from Islam and the Sirah of Holy Prophet and thus concluded in the form of his own thoughts, he has expressed most of them in his famous five books for example ‘In Search of Muhammad’, ‘Muslims and Modernity’, ‘Studying Islam’, ‘Interpreting the Qur’an’, and ‘Victorian Images of Islam’ (doctoral thesis)’.
This study focuses on Clinton Bennett’s work on Sirah specifically with his broader view of the subject. This research is descriptive and analytical in nature and presents a detailed analysis of the work it is based upon.
The stability of cyclic peptides and their self-assembling ability is an important aspect in the DNA recognition studies. Functionalization of cyclic peptides with nuclear bases may serve the purpose of mimicking and interacting with the DNA single strand. Stacking of the cyclic peptides after functionalzation may develop steric hinderance. L-Lysine, with side chain amino group, was selected to avoid these steric factors. Differently-protected L-lysine was transformed into its respective β-analogue using Arndt Eistert synthesis. These β-amino acids were utilized to synthesize cyclic β-tripeptide scaffolds through a multistep sequence. The scaffolds after deprotection were subjected to functionalization with the selected nuclear bases (adenine, thymine, cytosine and guanine) after conversion to their acetic acid derivatives. The nucleobase-functionalized cyclic β-tripeptide scaffolds were completely deprotected, purified by RP-HPLC and characterized by ESI and HRMS.