Natural products have proven to be promising anti-cancer agents due to their diverse chemical structures and bioactivity. This review examines their central role in cancer treatment, focusing on their mechanisms of action and therapeutic benefits. Medicinal plants contain bioactive compounds, such as flavonoids, alkaloids, terpenoids and polyphenols, which exhibit various anticancer properties. These compounds induce apoptosis, inhibit cell proliferation and cell cycle progression, interfere with microtubule formation, act on topoisomerase targets, inhibit angiogenesis, modulate key signaling pathways, improve the tumor microenvironment, reverse drug resistance and activate immune cells. Herbal anti-cancer drugs offer therapeutic advantages, particularly selective toxicity against cancer cells, reducing the adverse side effects associated with conventional chemotherapy. Recent studies and clinical trials highlight the benefits of herbal medicines in alleviating side effects, improving tolerance to chemotherapy and the occurrence of synergistic effects with conventional treatments. For example, the herbal medicine SH003 was found to be safe and potentially effective in the treatment of solid cancers, while Fucoidan showed anti-inflammatory properties that are beneficial for patients with advanced cancer. The current research landscape on herbal anticancer agents is extensive. Numerous studies and clinical trials are investigating their efficacy, safety and mechanisms of action in various cancers such as lung, prostate, breast and hepatocellular carcinoma. Promising developments include the polypharmacological approach, combination therapies, immunomodulation and the improvement of quality of life. However, there are still challenges in the development and use of natural products as anti-cancer drugs, such as the need for further research into their mechanisms of action, possible drug interactions and optimal dosage. Standardizing herbal extracts, improving bioavailability and delivery, and overcoming regulatory and acceptance hurdles are critical issues that need to be addressed. Nonetheless, the promising anticancer effects and therapeutic benefits of natural products warrant further investigation and development. Multidisciplinary collaboration is essential to advance herbal cancer therapy and integrate these agents into mainstream cancer treatment.

Visceral pain in Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is difficult to evaluate objectively due to its complex physiological nature and lack of reliable biomarkers. Given the complexity of IBS, a multimodal physiological monitoring approach, combining electrodermal activity (EDA), electrocardiogram (ECG), and surface electromyography (sEMG), offers a promising approach to capture the autonomic and muscular responses linked to visceral pain. However, no existing wearable device supports simultaneous EDA, ECG, and sEMG acquisition from the abdomen in a format suitable for long-term, real-world use. This study presents the development and validation of a novel wearable belt for concurrent ECG, sEMG, and EDA monitoring, with EDA measured at both the torso and wrist. The system was built using modified BITalino platforms with custom-fabricated reusable electrodes and Bluetooth connectivity for real-time smartphone display. Signal quality was validated against laboratory-grade systems in 20 healthy participants during a four-stage protocol involving cognitive, orthostatic, muscular, and combined stress tasks. Time and frequency-domain analyses showed high correlations and comparable spectral features across all modalities. The belt maintained stable skin contact even during movement-intensive tasks. By enabling anatomically targeted, multimodal data acquisition, this wearable system supports real-world visceral pain assessment in IBS and is ready for deployment in ambulatory and home-based monitoring scenarios.

The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) applications, particularly in edge computing, has exposed the limitations of conventional silicon-based hardware, including excessive power consumption, thermal challenges, and insufficient computational density. These issues are exacerbated by the slowing pace of transistor miniaturization under Moore’s law, necessitating innovative semiconductor technologies. While complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-based ternary logic implementations exist, their reliance on precise threshold voltage regulation results in high power consumption and larger chip architectures. Emerging technologies like Fin-based FETs, carbon nanotube FETs, and Tunnel FETs also face significant constraints, such as fabrication challenges and inadequate performance for ternary logic. This work addresses these challenges by proposing a graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistor (GNRFET)-based ternary half adder (THA) circuit. Leveraging GNRFET’s superior attributes—such as tunable bandgap properties, high carrier mobility, and precise threshold voltage control—the proposed THA circuit achieves enhanced performance. Simulations at 0.9 V show a 41.5% reduction in delay, a 7.7% decrease in power, and a 52.3% improvement in energy efficiency compared to CNTFET-based counterpart. Additionally, the proposed THA circuit achieves at least a 13.7% lower power consumption and a 6.2% enhancement in energy efficiency over previous GNRFET-based THA designs. To further evaluate performance, a ternary full adder (TFA) was implemented using the proposed THA. The design demonstrates significant enhancements, achieving power reductions of 34.3%–58.5%, energy efficiency improvements of 18.6%–70.2%, and transistor count reductions of 19%–34.7% compared to recent GNRFET-based TFA designs.

This paper presents a novel 8-transistor (8T) static random-access memory (SRAM) cell employing a hybrid cross-coupled inverter (HCCI) structure to address critical challenges in power-constrained computing environments. The proposed HCCI8T architecture integrates conventional and Schmitt-trigger inverters within the feedback loop to improve write stability and eliminate write half-selection disturbance, a common issue in conventional 8T cells. The design is implemented using carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNTFET) technology at the 32-nm node, offering superior electrical characteristics over traditional devices. Device-level simulations demonstrate a 2.52× improvement in on-current, 8.19× reduction in off-current, and a 20.65× increase in the on-off current ratio compared to baseline transistors, alongside a 1.18× reduction in subthreshold swing. Circuit-level analysis at 0.7 V shows significant improvements in memory performance: a 2.11× enhancement in write static noise margin (0.415 V), a 2.2× improvement in read static noise margin (0.238 V), and reductions of 28.88% in read power, 25.38% in write power, and 59.57% in leakage power. Although the design incurs a moderate latency increase (22–27%), Monte Carlo simulations confirm strong robustness under process variations. Additionally, the proposed SRAM cell achieves an electrical quality metric (EQM) of 1.314 × 10^-5 at 0.35 V, outperforming existing CNTFET-based alternatives. These results establish the HCCI8T cell as a viable candidate for next-generation low-power memory systems where static noise immunity and write integrity are critical under tight energy budgets.