Is there a potential of misuse for Magnolia officinalis compounds/metabolites?

© 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Objective: Magnolia bark contains magnolol, metabolized to tetrahydromagnolol and honokiol, with both GABA-ergic/cannabimimetic activities, hence of possible attraction to vulnerable individuals/recreational misusers. Methods: A literature review, assessment of related anecdotal online Magnolia misuse's reports and an overview of Magnolia products' online acquisition possibilities has been here described. Results: No peer-reviewed papers about Magnolia abuse/misuse/dependence/addiction were identified. Conversely, from a range of websites emerged potentially 3 groups of Magnolia misusers: (a) subjects with a psychiatric history already treated with benzodiazepines, being attracted to Magnolia bark as a “natural sedative”; (b) polydrug misusers, ingesting Magnolia with a range of other herbs/plants, attracted by the GABA-ergic/cannabimimetic activities; (c) subjects naive to the misusing drugs' scenario, perceiving Magnolia as a natural dietary supplement/weight-control compound. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper commenting on the possible Magnolia derivatives' potential of misuse. Magnolia's recent increase in popularity, mainly as a sedative, may be arguably due to its peculiar pharmacological properties/acceptable affordability levels/virtually worldwide favorable legal status and customers' attraction to a product being perceived as “natural” and hence somehow “safe.” Future/potent/synthetic magnolol and honokiol structural analogues could however contribute to increasing the number of synthetic GABA-ergic/cannabimimetic misusing compounds.Peer reviewe

Applications of New Technologies and New Methods in ZHENG Differentiation

With the hope to provide an effective approach for personalized diagnosis and treatment clinically, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is being paid increasing attention as a complementary and alternative medicine. It performs treatment based on ZHENG (TCM syndrome) differentiation, which could be identified as clinical special phenotypes by symptoms and signs of patients. However, it caused skepticism and criticism because ZHENG classification only depends on observation, knowledge, and clinical experience of TCM practitioners, which is lack of objectivity and repeatability. Scientists have done fruitful researches for its objectivity and standardization. Compared with traditional four diagnostic methods (looking, listening and smelling, asking, and touching), in this paper, the applications of new technologies and new methods on the ZHENG differentiation were systemically reviewed, including acquisition, analysis, and integration of clinical data or information. Furthermore, the characteristics and application range of these technologies and methods were summarized. It will provide reference for further researches

Conceptual graph-based knowledge representation for supporting reasoning in African traditional medicine

Although African patients use both conventional or modern and traditional healthcare simultaneously, it has been proven that 80% of people rely on African traditional medicine (ATM). ATM includes medical activities stemming from practices, customs and traditions which were integral to the distinctive African cultures. It is based mainly on the oral transfer of knowledge, with the risk of losing critical knowledge. Moreover, practices differ according to the regions and the availability of medicinal plants. Therefore, it is necessary to compile tacit, disseminated and complex knowledge from various Tradi-Practitioners (TP) in order to determine interesting patterns for treating a given disease. Knowledge engineering methods for traditional medicine are useful to model suitably complex information needs, formalize knowledge of domain experts and highlight the effective practices for their integration to conventional medicine. The work described in this paper presents an approach which addresses two issues. First it aims at proposing a formal representation model of ATM knowledge and practices to facilitate their sharing and reusing. Then, it aims at providing a visual reasoning mechanism for selecting best available procedures and medicinal plants to treat diseases. The approach is based on the use of the Delphi method for capturing knowledge from various experts which necessitate reaching a consensus. Conceptual graph formalism is used to model ATM knowledge with visual reasoning capabilities and processes. The nested conceptual graphs are used to visually express the semantic meaning of Computational Tree Logic (CTL) constructs that are useful for formal specification of temporal properties of ATM domain knowledge. Our approach presents the advantage of mitigating knowledge loss with conceptual development assistance to improve the quality of ATM care (medical diagnosis and therapeutics), but also patient safety (drug monitoring)

An overview of decision table literature 1982-1995.

This report gives an overview of the literature on decision tables over the past 15 years. As much as possible, for each reference, an author supplied abstract, a number of keywords and a classification are provided. In some cases own comments are added. The purpose of these comments is to show where, how and why decision tables are used. The literature is classified according to application area, theoretical versus practical character, year of publication, country or origin (not necessarily country of publication) and the language of the document. After a description of the scope of the interview, classification results and the classification by topic are presented. The main body of the paper is the ordered list of publications with abstract, classification and comments.

Social capital, organizational learning and enterprise performance: an empirical study on pharmaceutical companies in China

With the transformation and upgrading of China's industrial structure, the market-driven restructuring of the global pharmaceutical value chain and the innovation-led structuring of the pharmaceutical industry have led to increasingly fierce competition among pharmaceutical enterprises and the challenge is choosing to survive or to die. In order to meet these challenges, it is necessary for pharmaceutical enterprises to deeply carry out organizational learning. Therefore, what is the effect that various types of social capital have in promoting intra-organizational and inter-organizational learning in Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises? Which types of organizational learning should be adopted to achieve collaborative innovation and improve innovation performance of Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises, thus promoting their overall performance and sustainable development? Combining empirical research with case study, including normative research, and from the perspective of exploratory learning and exploitative learning, this thesis makes a comprehensive and in-depth study of the impact of social capital on enterprise performance in Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises, theoretically explores the connections between the main research variables, constructs a theoretical model, and puts forward the hypotheses of this study. After validation, the main conclusions are drawn as follows: (1) External social capital is conducive to exploratory learning of pharmaceutical enterprises, while internal social capital is favorable for exploitative learning of pharmaceutical enterprises. (2) Exploratory learning of pharmaceutical enterprises plays a positive role in improving the ability of exploitative learning, but exploratory learning and exploitative learning have different impact on different aspects of enterprise performance. (3) Organizational learning plays an intermediary role between social capital and business performance of pharmaceutical enterprises.Com a transformação e melhoria da estrutura industrial da China, a que se junta a restruturação da cadeia de valor da indústria farmacêutica, mais orientada para o mercado e para a inovação, o desafio está entre sobreviver ou morrer e, para tal, as empresas desta indústria deverão introduzir na sua estrutura interna formas de aprendizagem organizacional contínua. Que efeito têm os diferentes tipos de capital social na aprendizagem intra e inter organizacional no caso das empresas farmacêuticas na China? Que tipos de aprendizagem organizacional devem ser adoptados para se conseguir melhorar a inovação nessas empresas e assim promover o seu desempenho e desenvolvimento sustentável? Esta tese procura responder a estas perguntas através de um estudo empírico e da análise de um caso para, a partir da perspetiva das aprendizagens incremental e exploratória, estudar o impacto do capital social no desempenho das empresas farmacêuticas chinesas escolhidas como objeto de estudo. Teoricamente exploraram-se as relações entre as variáveis da pesquisa e elaborou-se um modelo conceptual a partir do qual se propuseram as hipóteses. Os principais resultados revelam que: (1) o capital social externo afeta positivamente a aprendizagem exploratória das empresas estudadas enquanto que o mesmo sucede com a influência que o capital social interno tem na aprendizagem incremental; (2) A aprendizagem exploratória desempenha um papel positivo na capacidade de melhorar a aprendizagem incremental mas ambos os tipos de aprendizagem têm impactos diferentes no desempenho das empresas estudadas; (3) a aprendizagem organizacional, refletida na interação entre as aprendizagens exploratória e incremental desempenha um papel mediador no desempenho das empresas objeto da amostra

Tongue Image Analysis for Diabetes Mellitus Diagnosis Based on SOM Kohonen

Tongue diagnosis is an important diagnostic method for evaluating the condition of internal organ by looking at the image of tongue . However, due to its qualitative, subjective and experience-based nature, traditional tongue diagnosis has a very limited application in clinical medicine. Moreover, traditional tongue diagnosis is always concerned with the identification of syndromes rather than with the connection between tongue abnormal appearances and diseases. This is not well understood in Western medicine, thus greatly obstruct its wider use in the world. In this paper, we present a novel computerized tongue inspection method aiming to address these problems. First, two kinds of quantitative features, chromatic and textural measures, are extracted from tongue images by using popular digital image processing techniques. Then, SOM Kohonen are employed to model the relationship between these quantitative features and diseases. The effectiveness of the method is tested on 35 patients affected by Diabetes Mellitus as well as other 30 healthy volunteers, and the diagnostic results predicted by the previously trained SOM Kohonen classifiers are compared with the HOMA-B

A Model for an Intelligent Support Decision System in Aquaculture

The paper purpose an intelligent software system agents–based to support decision in aquculture and the approach of fish diagnosis with informatics methods, techniques and solutions. A major purpose is to develop new methods and techniques for quick fish diagnosis, treatment and prophyilaxis at infectious and parasite-based known disorders, that may occur at fishes raised in high density in intensive raising systems. But, the goal of this paper is to presents a model of an intelligent agents-based diagnosis method will be developed for a support decision system.support decision system, diagnosis, multi-agent system, fish diseases

Neurocognitive Informatics Manifesto.

Informatics studies all aspects of the structure of natural and artificial information systems. Theoretical and abstract approaches to information have made great advances, but human information processing is still unmatched in many areas, including information management, representation and understanding. Neurocognitive informatics is a new, emerging field that should help to improve the matching of artificial and natural systems, and inspire better computational algorithms to solve problems that are still beyond the reach of machines. In this position paper examples of neurocognitive inspirations and promising directions in this area are given

Chinese regional innovation systems in times of crisis: the case of Guangdong

The dynamic economic development of Guangdong province is one of the most prominent examples of China's catch-up in the course of the past two decades. Once chosen as the nation's first experimental field for the market economy, the province continued to participate above average in national economic growth ever since. Up to today, it maintains a leading position with regard to general industrial performance and average personal income. As China's industry begins to embark on a path of technological up-grading, however, this pre-eminent position begins to be challenged. In the nation's emerging fields of strength, the province's rivals, Beijing and Shanghai, are in a better starting position since they are better endowed with both R&D capacities and qualified human capital. In this context, our paper illustrates the resulting challenges by means of a number of specialized indicators and explains why, despite a continously impres-sive export performance in the high-tech sectors, Guangdong is far from well prepared to maintain its current position. Finally, it briefly describes the policy responses that have been developed, concluding that despite clear evidence of progress some key issues with regard to regional innovation policy appear to remain unaddressed. --