The antifungal effect of thymoquinone, a component of black seed essential oil, has been studied on different types of fungi. Its mechanism of action as an antifungal has not been described yet. This study demonstrates the fungicidal effect of thymoquinone on different Candida species with particular emphasis on C. glabrata planktonic cells and biofilms. Since cell death was induced via the generation of oxidative stress as evidenced by the abrogation of thymoquinone toxicity in cells incubated with antioxidants, a part of thymoquinone’s mechanism of action includes a direct involvement as a pro-oxidant. This was further confirmed by measuring the generation of reactive oxygen species, glutathione level reduction and decrease in mitochondrial membrane potential. The oxidative stress caused by thymoquinone was confirmed to be the cause of death and not a result of cell death.

Abstract

Walking considered as one of the safest modes of

travel available, sustainable to human society as well as

environmentally beneficial. In this context, the aim of this

research is to investigate pedestrians’ traffic gap acceptance

and crossing decision for Mid-block Street crossing in urban

areas in Malaysia. Pedestrian crossing behaviour at

Rughaya Street has been examined in terms of the decision

to cross or not the street and size of traffic gaps accepted by

pedestrian, as well as the related contributing factors. A

field study was conducted to collect the data of pedestrians’

decisions under real mix traffic Condition using video

camera on a typical unsignalized urban street section. JPEG

files were obtained from video recording by using Snapshot

Wizard software. The data extracted included traffic

characteristics such as traffic size, traffic speed, etc.

pedestrian individual characteristics such as gender, in

addition to individual behavior such as waiting, frequency

of attempt, etc.). Furthermore, The extracted data were

used to develop and examine a pedestrian gap acceptance

model based on A lognormal regression model and binary

logistic model by SPSS (22) in order to validate the impact

of various parameters on the size of traffic gaps accepted by

pedestrians as well as the effect on the decision of

pedestrians to cross the street or not. So that the effect of

the gap accepted available and of other factors on the

decision of pedestrians to cross the street or not is examined.

These results indicate that the data set for this particular

location has a majority of male pedestrians which were

insignificant variables in both models moreover a lognormal

regression results shows that accepted gaps size depend on

traffic size, crossing distance, speed of approaching vehicle

and time spent by pedestrian at the curb waiting for a

suitable gap size to start crossing. The BL model performs

well for the reason that it captures the pedestrian decision

making process with traffic taking the relevant attributes

into consideration. According to the coefficients of BL

regression analysis equation we noticed that the illegal

parking, traffic size, traffic waiting time and gap size are the

vital attributes for the Pedestrian gap acceptance model..

Index Terms: Pedestrian crossing, gap acceptance, crossing

decision, multiple linear regression, binary logistic

regression.