Cigarette Smoke Extract Stimulates Rat Pulmonary Artery Smooth Muscle Cell Proliferation via PKC-PDGFB Signaling

Accumulating evidence suggests a direct role for cigarette smoke in pulmonary vascular remodeling, which contributes to the development of pulmonary hypertension. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying this process remain poorly understood. Platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF) is a potential mitogen and chemoattractant implicated in several biological processes, including cell survival, proliferation, and migration. In this study, we investigated the effect of cigarette smoke extract (CSE) on cell proliferation of rat pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells (rPASMCs). We found that stimulation of rPASMCs with CSE significantly increased cell proliferation and promoted cell cycle progression from G1 phase to the S and G2 phases. CSE treatment also significantly upregulated the mRNA and protein levels of PDGFB and PDGFRβ. Our study also revealed that Rottlerin, an inhibitor of PKCδ signaling, prevented CSE-induced cell proliferation, attenuated the increase of S and G2 phase populations induced by CSE treatment, and downregulated PDGFB and PDGFRβ mRNA and protein levels in rPASMCs exposed to CSE. Collectively, our data demonstrated that CSE-induced cell proliferation of rPASMCs involved upregulation of the PKCδ-PDGFB pathway

Intranasal Immunization with Chitosan/pCAGGS-flaA Nanoparticles Inhibits Campylobacter jejuni in a White Leghorn Model

Campylobacter jejuni is the most common zoonotic bacterium associated with human diarrhea, and chickens are considered to be one of the most important sources for human infection, with no effective prophylactic treatment available. We describe here a prophylactic strategy using chitosan-DNA intranasal immunization to induce specific immune responses. The chitosan used for intranasal administration is a natural mucus absorption enhancer, which results in transgenic DNA expression in chicken nasopharynx. Chickens immunized with chitosan-DNA nanoparticles, which carried a gene for the major structural protein FlaA, produced significantly increased levels of serum anti-Campylobacter jejuni IgG and intestinal mucosal antibody (IgA), compared to those treated with chitosan-DNA (pCAGGS). Chitosan-pCAGGS-flaA intranasal immunization induced reductions of bacterial expellation by 2-3 log10 and 2 log10 in large intestine and cecum of chickens, respectively, when administered with the isolated C. jejuni strain. This study demonstrated that intranasal delivery of chitosan-DNA vaccine successfully induced effective immune response and might be a promising vaccine candidate against C. jejuni infection

6-(2-Fluoro­phen­yl)-5,6-dihydro­benzimidazolo[1,2-c]quinazoline

In the title compound, C20H14FN3, the pyrimidine ring adopts a half-chair conformation. The dihedral angle between the benzimidazole ring system and the fluoro­phenyl ring is 84.18 (10)°. In the crystal structure, mol­ecules are linked into a two-dimensional network parallel to the bc plane by N—H⋯N and C—H⋯F hydrogen bonds

Multiscale Combined Model Based on Run-Length-Judgment Method and Its Application in Oil Price Forecasting

Forecasting of oil price is an important area of energy market research. Based on the idea of decomposition-reconstruction-integration, this paper built a new multiscale combined forecasting model with the methods of empirical mode decomposition (EMD), artificial neural network (ANN), support vector machine (SVM), and time series methods. While building the model, we proposed a new idea to use run length judgment method to reconstruct the component sequences. Then this model was applied to analyze the fluctuation and trend of international oil price. Oil price series was decomposed and reconstructed into high frequency, medium frequency, low frequency, and trend sequences. Different features of fluctuation can be explained by irregular factors, season factors, major events, and long-term trend. Empirical analysis showed that the multiscale combined model obtained the best forecasting result compared with single models including ARIMA, Elman, SVM, and GARCH and combined models including ARIMA-SVM model and EMD-SVM-SVM method

Pre-Late Eocene position of the Lüchun-Jinping microblock in western Yangtze Craton: constraints from Eocene-Oligocene lamprophyres in southeastern Tibet

The tectono-magmatic history of the Lüchun-Jinping microblock and its possible affinity with the Yangtze Craton are important elements for the reconstruction of Cenozoic plate tectonics in southeastern Tibet. In order to constrain the affinity and decipher the pre-Cenozoic paleopositon of the Lüchun-Jinping microblock, we focused on the petrogenesis of Eocene-Oligocene lamprophyres in the Lüchun-Jinping microblock. The lamprophyres yield zircon Usingle bondPb ages of 34.7–33.3 Ma and exhibit potassic-ultrapotassic features with elevated K2O/Na2O (1.4–4.0) ratios. They are characterized by high concentrations of compatible elements (e.g., Cr = 187–692 ppm, Ni = 31–218 ppm), large-ion-lithophile elements and light rare-earth elements enrichment, high-field-strength elements depletion, and high radiogenic isotopic values, i.e. (87Sr/86Sr)i = 0.7063–0.7078 and εNd(t) = −3.9 to −2.4. Combined with the low Nb/U ratios, these features suggest that the lithospheric mantle source was metasomatized by subduction-related fluids beneath the Lüchun-Jinping microblock. The relatively high Rb/Sr ratios and high heavy rare-earth element contents indicate that these lamprophyres were derived from partial melting of a phlogopite-bearing lherzolite within the spinel stability field. The parental magmas have experienced fractional crystallization of olivine and clinopyroxene during emplacement. Comprehensive comparisons between the lamprophyres from the Lüchun-Jinping microblock and the potassic-ultrapotassic mafic rocks from the western Yangtze Craton indicate that the Lüchun-Jinping microblock can be regarded as a dismembered part of the western Yangtze Craton due to continental extrusion and Cenozoic sinistral displacement. The compositional trends of the potassic-ultrapotassic mafic rocks suggest that the palaeogeographic position of the Lüchun-Jinping microblock was near the Dali area (west of the Binchuan) and close to the Jinshajiang suture zone before the Cenozoic

Spatial beam self-cleaning in bi-tapered multimode fibers

We report the spatial beam self-cleaning in bi-tapered conventional multimode fibers (MMFs) with different tapered lengths. Through the introduction of the bi-tapered structure in MMFs, the input beam with poor beam quality from a high-power fiber laser can be converted to a centered, bell-shaped beam in a short length, due to the strengthened nonlinear modes coupling. It is found that the bi-tapered MMF with longer tapered length at the same waist diameter shows better beam self-cleaning effect and larger spectral broadening. The obtained results offer a new method to improve the beam quality of high-power laser at low cost. Besides, it may be interesting for manufacturing bi-tapered MMF-based devices to obtain the quasi-fundamental mode beam in spatiotemporal mode-locked fiber lasers

Pattern of Mutation Rates in the Germline of Drosophila Melanogaster Males From a Large-Scale Mutation Screening Experiment

The sperm or eggs of sexual organisms go through a series of cell divisions from the fertilized egg; mutations can occur at each division. Mutations in the lineage of cells leading to the sperm or eggs are of particular importance because many such mutations may be shared by somatic tissues and also may be inherited, thus having a lasting consequence. For decades, little has been known about the pattern of the mutation rates along the germline development. Recently it was shown from a small portion of data that resulted from a large-scale mutation screening experiment that the rates of recessive lethal or nearly lethal mutations differ dramatically during the germline development of Drosophila melanogaster males. In this paper the full data set from the experiment and its analysis are reported by taking advantage of a recent methodologic advance. By analyzing the mutation patterns with different levels of recessive lethality, earlier published conclusions based on partial data are found to remain valid. Furthermore, it is found that for most nearly lethal mutations, the mutation rate at the first cell division is even greater than previous thought compared with those at other divisions. There is also some evidence that the mutation rate at the second division decreases rapidly but is still appreciably greater than those for the rest of the cleavage stage. The mutation rate at spermatogenesis is greater than late cleavage and stem-cell stages, but there is no evidence that rates are different among the five cell divisions of the spermatogenesis. We also found that a modestly biased sampling, leading to slightly more primordial germ cells after the eighth division than those reported in the literature, provides the best fit to the data. These findings provide conceptual and numerical basis for exploring the consequences of differential mutation rates during individual development

Yin-Cold

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) therapies should be tailored according to the different syndrome types. In order to identify the relationship between the TCM Yin-cold (YC) or Yang-heat (YH) syndrome types and the EGFR gene status, we prospectively studied 310 NSCLC patients. TCM YH or YC was diagnosed by three TCM experts. TCM symptoms and signs were entered into a binary cluster analysis. The relationships between the EGFR gene status, YH or YC syndrome types, and classification by cluster analysis were analyzed using the chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression. In the 299 patients who had their EGFR gene tested, 45.24% YC (76/168) and 25.95% YH (34/131) patients had EGFR mutations (p=0.001). Among the 292 patients entered into the cluster analysis, 132 were classified into group A, with signs and symptoms similar to YC, whereas 160 group B patients were similar to YH. In the 281 patients with EGFR tested, 45.67% group A (58/127) and 28.57% group B patients (44/154) had EGFR mutations (p=0.003). The EGFR status was independently correlated with TCM syndrome type and classification by cluster analysis on multivariate logistic regression. NSCLC patients with YC were more likely to have EGFR gene mutations