Effects of Curcumin on N-bis(2-Hydroxypropyl) nitrosamine (DHPN)-induced Lung and Liver Tumorigenesis in BALB/c Mice In Vivo

[[abstract]]Curcumin (diferuloylmethane), a phenolic compound front the plant Curcuma longa (Linn.) has been shown to exhibit antitumor activity and apoptosis in many human cancer cell lines including that of lung and liver cancer. In this study, curcumin was evaluated in BALB/c mice for its ability to inhibit pulmonary and liver adenoma formation and growth after they were orally treated with N-bis(2-hydroxypropyl)nitrosamine (DHPN). Animals were treated with DHPN in water for approximately 14 days before multiple doses of curcumin were given intraperitoneally. It was found that 200 mu M curcumin reduced lung and liver tumor multiplicity by 37% (p<0.05) and 30% (p<0.05) respectively. The results indicated that curcumin significantly inhibited pulmonary and liver adenoma formation and growth in BALB/c mice. The precise mechanism by which curcumin inhibits lung and liver tumorigenesis remains to be elucidated. Thus, curcumin appears to be a promising new chemotherapeutic and preventive agent for lung and liver cancer induced by DHPN

Involvement of Matrix Metalloproteinases in the Inhibition of Cell Invasion and Migration Through the Inhibition of NF-kappa B by the New Synthesized Ethyl 2-[N-p-chlorobenzyl-(2'-methyl)]anilino-4-oxo-4,5-dihydrofuran-3-carboxylate (JOTO1007) in Human Cervical Cancer Ca Ski Cells

[[abstract]]JOTO1007 (ethyl 2-[N-p-chlorobenzyl-(2'-methyl)] anilino-4-oxo-4,5-dihydrofuran-3-carboxylate) has anticancer effects in human cervical cancer Ca Ski cells. However, its mechanism of action on the cell migration and invasion of human cervical cancer Ca Ski cells is not fully understood. In this study, firstly, the effects of JOTO1007 on the migration and invasion of Ca Ski cells were examined by using matrigel counting. The results showed that JOT01007 suppressed the migration and invasion of the Ca Ski cells. Secondly, the effect of JOTO1007 on the levels of proteins associated with cell metastasis was examined using Western blotting. The results indicated that JOTO1007 inhibited the levels of son of sevenless homolog 1 (SOS-1), growth factor receptor-bound protein 2 (GRB2), Ras homolog gene family, member A (RhoA), Rho-associated, coiled-coil containing protein kinase 1 (ROCK-1), focal adhesion kinase (FAK), phosphorylated-c-jun (p-c-jun), nuclear factor kappa B (NF-kappa B) p65, cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2), matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), MMP-7 and MMP-9, but promoted the levels of protein kinase C (PKC), phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3K), MAP kinase kinase kinase 3 (MEKK-3), mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase 7 (MKK7), c-jun and inducible nitric oxide synthases (iNOS), while not affecting Ras, phosphorylated-ERK (p-ERK), p38 and c-jun N-terminal kinase 1/2 (JNK1/2), which finally led to the inhibition of migration and invasion of the Ca Ski cells in vitro. Overall, JOTO1007 inhibited NF-kappa B which then led to the inhibition of the MMP-2, -7 and -9 expression followed by the inhibition of migration and invasion in the Ca Ski cells

Quantitative measures of functional outcomes and quality of life in patients with C5 palsy

AbstractBackgroundIt is generally understood that postoperative C5 palsy can occur with anterior or posterior decompression surgery, but functional measures of the palsy have not been well documented. This study aimed to investigate the incidence of C5 palsy in different surgical procedures, examine the correlations between muscle strength, upper extremity functional measures, and health-related quality of life, and to observe potential risk factors contributing to C5 palsy.MethodsOur investigation involved a retrospective study design. A total of 364 patients who underwent decompression surgery were indicated within the selected exclusion criteria. Additionally, 12 C5 palsy patients were recruited. The relationships between the manual muscle test (MMT), the action research arm test (ARAT), the Jebsen test of hand function (JTHF), and the European quality of life-5 dimensions (EQ-5D) were studied, and univariate analyses were performed to search possible risk factors and recovery investigation.ResultsThe data analyzed in the 12 cases and C5 palsy incidences (3.3%) were: 0.7% in anterior procedures (n = 2), 8.8% in posterior procedures (n = 6), and 36.4% in combined procedures (n = 4). Moderate-to-high correlations were observed between the ARAT, JTHF, EQ-5D visual analog scale scores, and MMT (r = 0.636–0.899). There were significant differences in patient age, etiology of cervical lesion, variable decompression procedures, and the number of decompression levels between the C5 palsy and non-C5 palsy groups. For female patients (p = 0.018) and number of decompression levels (p = 0.028), there were significant differences between the complete recovery and the incomplete recovery groups.ConclusionPatients undergoing combined anterior–posterior decompression surgery had the highest incidence of C5 palsy, and correlations between the ARAT, JTHF, EQ-5D visual analog scale clinical tools, and MMT scores supported these findings. Female status and lower decompression levels could also be predictive factors for complete recovery, although additional research is needed to substantiate these findings

THE COMPARATIVE STUDY ON EXPECTED TOTAL QUALITY COST BETWEEN TRADITIONAL SINGLE SAMPLING PLAN AND ECONOMICAL DESIGN

In the quality inspection practice of the consumer electronics industry, MIL-STD-105E sampling table is viewed as the basis for sampling plans. This traditional quality inspection plan determine the sample size and reject rule based on the size of lot, consumer�s and producer's risk and average quality level (AQL). Traditional sampling plan does not consider internal and external quality costs. However, quality costs were considered in many previous researches, but the comparison between traditional and economical design of single sampling plan is rare from now. This paper discusses the sampling test before the receiving inspection which is vendor simulated buyers. Includes the costs of inspection, rework, replacement, and external failure cost are considered. We compare the quality economical design with traditional single sampling plan under the total quality cost. This paper can be regarded as a reference for future studies and practical applications

Co-extraction of high-quality RNA and DNA from rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis)

High-quality nucleic acids are the basic requirement for performing genomic research. A reliable and efficient method was developed for co-extracting high-quality DNA and RNA from rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) in this study. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) extraction buffer with high concentrations of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) and β-mercaptoethanol was used in this study. The results show that 3.2% polyethylene glycol 8000 is the optimal concentration for successful separation of DNA and RNA. Spectrophotometric determination (A260/A280 and A260/A230 ratios), agarose electrophoresis analysis and reverse transcription (RT-PCR) of isolated nucleic acids indicate that high-quality DNA and RNA were extracted by this method. The general applicability of this method was also evaluated, and the results show that it was suitable for a variety of plants.Key words: Hevea brasiliensis, polyethylene glycol (PEG), nucleic acid, co-extraction, higher plants

ZARA: Improving Few-Shot Self-Rationalization for Small Language Models

Language models (LMs) that jointly generate end-task answers as well as free-text rationales are known as self-rationalization models. Recent works demonstrate great performance gain for self-rationalization by few-shot prompting LMs with rationale-augmented exemplars. However, the ability to benefit from explanations only emerges with large-scale LMs, which have poor accessibility. In this work, we explore the less-studied setting of leveraging explanations for small LMs to improve few-shot self-rationalization. We first revisit the relationship between rationales and answers. Inspired by the implicit mental process of how human beings assess explanations, we present a novel approach, Zero-shot Augmentation of Rationale-Answer pairs (ZARA), to automatically construct pseudo-parallel data for self-training by reducing the problem of plausibility judgement to natural language inference. Experimental results show ZARA achieves SOTA performance on the FEB benchmark, for both the task accuracy and the explanation metric. In addition, we conduct human and quantitative evaluation validating ZARA's ability to automatically identify plausible and accurate rationale-answer pairs.Comment: Accepted as a long paper at EMNLP Findings 202

Investigation and identification of protein γ-glutamyl carboxylation sites

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Carboxylation is a modification of glutamate (Glu) residues which occurs post-translation that is catalyzed by γ-glutamyl carboxylase in the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum. Vitamin K is a critical co-factor in the post-translational conversion of Glu residues to γ-carboxyglutamate (Gla) residues. It has been shown that the process of carboxylation is involved in the blood clotting cascade, bone growth, and extraosseous calcification. However, studies in this field have been limited by the difficulty of experimentally studying substrate site specificity in γ-glutamyl carboxylation. <it>In silico</it> investigations have the potential for characterizing carboxylated sites before experiments are carried out.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Because of the importance of γ-glutamyl carboxylation in biological mechanisms, this study investigates the substrate site specificity in carboxylation sites. It considers not only the composition of amino acids that surround carboxylation sites, but also the structural characteristics of these sites, including secondary structure and solvent-accessible surface area (ASA). The explored features are used to establish a predictive model for differentiating between carboxylation sites and non-carboxylation sites. A support vector machine (SVM) is employed to establish a predictive model with various features. A five-fold cross-validation evaluation reveals that the SVM model, trained with the combined features of positional weighted matrix (PWM), amino acid composition (AAC), and ASA, yields the highest accuracy (0.892). Furthermore, an independent testing set is constructed to evaluate whether the predictive model is over-fitted to the training set.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Independent testing data that did not undergo the cross-validation process shows that the proposed model can differentiate between carboxylation sites and non-carboxylation sites. This investigation is the first to study carboxylation sites and to develop a system for identifying them. The proposed method is a practical means of preliminary analysis and greatly diminishes the total number of potential carboxylation sites requiring further experimental confirmation.</p