Additional file 4: of Association between ambient air pollutants and preterm birth in Ningbo, China: a time-series study

Table S3. Difference of estimates and 95% confidence intervals (95% CIs) of air pollutants on risk of preterm birth between subgroups. (DOCX 20 kb

TNSPackage: A Fortran2003 library designed for tensor network state methods

Recently, the tensor network states (TNS) methods have proven to be very powerful tools to investigate the strongly correlated many-particle physics in one and two dimensions. The implementation of TNS methods depends heavily on the operations of tensors, including contraction, permutation, reshaping tensors, SVD and so on. Unfortunately, the most popular computer languages for scientific computation, such as Fortran and C/C++ do not have a standard library for such operations, and therefore make the coding of TNS very tedious. We develop a Fortran2003 package that includes all kinds of basic tensor operations designed for TNS. It is user-friendly and flexible for different forms of TNS, and therefore greatly simplifies the coding work for the TNS methods

Additional file 2: of Association between ambient air pollutants and preterm birth in Ningbo, China: a time-series study

Table S1. Association between cumulative air pollution concentrations and risk of preterm birth. (DOCX 18 kb

Additional file 3: of Association between ambient air pollutants and preterm birth in Ningbo, China: a time-series study

Table S2. Excess risks (ERs) and 95% confidence intervals of preterm birth per IQR increment in air pollutant concentrations stratified by season and maternal age in Ningbo, China. (DOCX 36 kb

Additional file 1: of Association between ambient air pollutants and preterm birth in Ningbo, China: a time-series study

Figure S1. Location of air quality monitor stations in Ningbo city. (PDF 13330 kb

Cytotoxic Tirucallane and Apotirucallane Triterpenoids from the Stems of <i>Picrasma quassioides</i>

Phytochemical investigation on the stems of <i>Picrasma quassioides</i> led to the isolation of a novel compound, picraquassin A (<b>1</b>), with an unprecedented 21,24-cycloapotirucallane skeleton, and four new apotirucallane-type triterpenoids (<b>2</b>–<b>5</b>), together with 15 new tirucallane-type triterpenoids (<b>6</b>–<b>20</b>) and 10 known tirucallane-type triterpenoids (<b>21</b>–<b>30</b>). To our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating the presence of apotirucallane-type triterpenoids in the genus <i>Picrasma</i>. The structures of the new compounds were determined based on spectroscopic data interpretation. Cytotoxicities of the isolated compounds were evaluated using three human cancer cell lines, MKN-28, A-549, and MCF-7. Compound <b>2</b> exhibited the most potent activity against MKN-28 cells with an IC₅₀ value of 2.5 μM. Flow cytometry and Western blot analysis revealed that <b>2</b> induces the apoptosis of MKN-28 cells via activating caspase-3/-9, while increasing Bax and Bad and decreasing Bcl-2 expression levels

Sesquiterpenoids from <i>Chloranthus anhuiensis</i> with Neuroprotective Effects in PC12 Cells

Glutamate-induced excito­toxicity plays a vital role in neuro­degenerative diseases. Neuroprotection against excito­toxicity has been considered as an effective experimental approach for preventing and/or treating excito­toxicity-mediated diseases. In the present study, six new sesqui­terpenoids (<b>1</b>–<b>6</b>) and 26 known compounds of this type (<b>7</b>–<b>32</b>) were isolated and characterized from the whole plants of <i>Chloranthus anhuiensis</i>. Chlorantolide A (<b>1</b>) is the first example of a 5,6-<i>seco</i>-germacrane-type sesqui­terpenoid, while phacadinane E (<b>2</b>) is a rare 4,5-<i>seco</i>-cadinane-type sesqui­terpenoid. The structures of the new compounds were determined by spectroscopic analysis and by calculations of electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectra. Their neuro­protective effects in mediating glutamate-induced PC12 cell apoptosis were evaluated. Compound <b>26</b> exhibited potent neuroprotective activity with an EC₅₀ value of 3.3 ± 0.9 μM. Using Hoechst 33258 staining, a caspase-3 activity assay, and Western blot analysis it was demonstrated that this compound reduces the apoptosis of PC12 cells through inhibition of caspase-3 activity, while activating the Akt signaling pathway