Meta-analysis of effectiveness of traditional Chinese medicine or its combination with Western medicine in the treatment of triple negative breast cancer

Purpose: To assess the efficacy and side effects of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in the management of triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Methods: Full text data on randomized controlled trial (RCT) of TNBC treated with TCM or its combination with Western Medicine (WM) were retrieved from the Chinese biomedical literature database, Chinese periodicals, Chinese Science-Technology periodicals and VP and PubMed. The qualities of the RCTs were evaluated. Revman 5.3 was used to conduct the meta-analysis. Results: A total of 16 RCTs involving 1186 patients were included. Analysis of these RCTs showed significant differences in total effectiveness between WM and TCM or combination of TCM with WM {(OR = 2.63, 95 % CI = 1.37, 5.03), test of the combined effect (Z = 2.91, p ˂ 0.005)}. Conclusion: The results show that TCM is effective in the treatment TNB

Low compressible noble metal carbides with rock-salt structure: ab initio total energy calculations of the elastic stability

We have systematically studied the mechanical stability of all noble metal carbides with the rock-salt structure by calculating their elastic constants within the density function theory scheme. It was found that only four carbides (RuC, PdC, AgC and PtC) are mechanically stable. In particular, we have shown that RuC, PdC, and PtC have very high bulk modulus, which has been remarkably observed by the most recent experiment for the case of PtC. From the calculated density of states, we can conclude that these compounds are metallic, like the conventional group IV and group V transition metal carbides.Comment: Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 071913 (2006

Biochemical, haematological and histopathological studies of extract of Ageratum conyzoides L. in Sprague Dawley rats

This study was conducted to evaluate the safety potential of the leaf extract of Ageratum conyzoides Linnaeus in Sprague Dawley (SD) rats using biochemical, haematological and histological indices of toxicity. Four groups of seven male SD rats per group were used for the study. To group A was administered 0.25% CMC-Na/ kg body weight and was used as the control group, while groups B, C and D were respectively administered with 500, 1000 and 1500 mg/kg body weight of the ethanolic leaf extract of A. conyzoides by gastric intubation for 14 days. Animals were subsequently anaesthetized, blood samples were collected for biochemical and haematological assays; organs were isolated and weighed, while the liver, kidney and spleen were processed for histopathological studies. Aspartate amino transferase, lactate dehydrogenase, creatine kinase and alkaline phosphatase were significantly (p < 0.05) reduced in the groups treated with 1000 and 1500 mg/kg body weight of the extract. Furthermore, there was a significant (p < 0.05) elevation in white blood cell count, mean platelet volume and % platelet distribution width. Histopathological studies indicated various degrees of hepatocellular necrosis in all the treated groups accompanied by significant increases in the weight of liver and spleen. The results showed that the ethanolic leaf extract of A. conyzoides significantly alters the biomarkers of cardiac and skeletal muscle disorders, and higher doses could induce liver cell injury

Coupled microbial bloom and oxygenation decline recorded by magnetofossils during the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

Understanding marine environmental change and associated biological turnover across the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM; ~56 Ma)—the most pronounced Cenozoic short-term global warming event—is important because of the potential role of the ocean in atmospheric CO2 drawdown, yet proxies for tracing marine productivity and oxygenation across the PETM are limited and results remain controversial. Here we show that a high-resolution record of South Atlantic Ocean bottom water oxygenation can be extracted from exceptionally preserved magnetofossils—the bioinorganic magnetite nanocrystals produced by magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) using a new multiscale environmental magnetic approach. Our results suggest that a transient MTB bloom occurred due to increased nutrient supply. Bottom water oxygenation decreased gradually from the onset to the peak PETM. These observations provide a record of microbial response to the PETM and establish the value of magnetofossils as palaeoenvironmental indicators

Potential super-hard Osmium di-nitride with fluorite structure: First-principles calculations

We have performed systematic first-principles calculations on di-carbide, -nitride, -oxide and -boride of platinum and osmium with the fluorite structure. It is found that only PtN$_{2}$, OsN$_{2}$ and OsO$_{2}$ are mechanically stable. In particular OsN$_{2}$ has the highest bulk modulus of 360.7 GPa. Both the band structure and density of states show that the new phase of OsN$_{2}$ is metallic. The high bulk modulus is owing to the strong covalent bonding between Os 5\textit{d} and N 2\textit{p} states and the dense packed fluorite structure.Comment: Phys. Rev. B 74,125118 (2006

Impact of a Regional Drought on Terrestrial Carbon Fluxes and Atmospheric Carbon: Results from a Coupled Carbon Cycle Model

Understanding the underlying processes that control the carbon cycle is key to predicting future global change. Much of the uncertainty in the magnitude and variability of the atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) stems from uncertainty in terrestrial carbon fluxes, and the relative impacts of temperature and moisture variations on regional and global scales are poorly understood. Here we investigate the impact of a regional drought on terrestrial carbon fluxes and CO2 mixing ratios over North America using the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) Model. Results show a sequence of changes in carbon fluxes and atmospheric CO2, induced by the drought. The relative contributions of meteorological changes to the neighboring carbon dynamics are also presented. The coupled modeling approach allows a direct quantification of the impact of the regional drought on local and proximate carbon exchange at the land surface via the carbon-water feedback processes

Seroprevalence Survey of Avian influenza A (H5) in wild migratory birds in Yunnan Province, Southwestern China

BACKGROUND: Highly pathogenic avian influenza virus (HPAIV) is a highly contagious disease which is a zoonotic pathogen of significant economic and public health concern. The outbreaks caused by HPAIV H5N1 of Asian origin have caused animal and human disease and mortality in several countries of Southeast Asia, such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Viet Nam. For the first time since 1961, this HPAIV has also caused extensive mortality in wild birds and has sparked debate of the role wild birds have played in the spread of this virus. Other than confirmed mortality events, little is known of this virus in wild birds. There is no report on the seroprevalence of avian influenza H5 infection in wild migratory birds in Yunnan Province. In this study we examined live wild birds in Yunnan Province for H5 specific antibody to better understand the occurrence of this disease in free living birds. METHODS: Sera from 440 wild birds were collected from in Kunming and Northern Ailaoshan of Yunnan Province, Southwestern China, and assayed for H5 antibodies using the hemagglutination inhibition (HI) assays. RESULTS: The investigation revealed that the seroprevalence of avian influenza H5 was as following: Ciconiiformes 2.6%, Strigiformes 13.04%, Passeriformes 20%, Cuculiformes 21.74%, Gruiformes 0%, Columbiformes 0%, Charadriiformes 0% and Coraciiformes 0%. Statistical analyses showed that there was a significant difference of prevalence between the orders (P < 0.01). Specific avian influenza H5 antibodies were detected in 23 of 440 (5.23%) sera. Mean HI titer 23 positive sera against H5 were 5.4 log(2). CONCLUSIONS: The results of the present survey indicated that the proportion of wild birds had previously infected AIV H5 at other times of the year. To our knowledge, this is the first seroprevalence report of avian influenza H5 infection in wild migratory birds in China’ s southwestern Yunnan Province. The results of the present survey have significant public health concerns

Cytotoxic flavonoids from the young twigs and leaves of Caesalpinia bonduc (Linn) Roxb

The extraction, fractionation and recognition of flavonoids from the ethanolic extract of young twigs and leaves of C. bonduc were carried out. In addition, cytotoxic study of the flavonoids on two cancer cell lines, BGC-823 and HeLa was carried our using sulphorhodamine B assay. Seven flavonoids, six of which are being reported for the first time in this plant, were isolated. Their structures were identified by MS and NMR spectroscopic methods. Petroleum ether, ethyl acetate and water fractions exhibited moderate cytotoxic activity against HeLa cells. Five compounds showed cytotoxic activity against HeLa cell in comparison with Paclitaxel, while only one compound showed a good degree of cytotoxic activity against BGC-823 cell in comparison to Paclitaxel. The results obtained showed a structure - activity relationship

Heterogeneous network embedding enabling accurate disease association predictions.

BackgroundIt is significant to identificate complex biological mechanisms of various diseases in biomedical research. Recently, the growing generation of tremendous amount of data in genomics, epigenomics, metagenomics, proteomics, metabolomics, nutriomics, etc., has resulted in the rise of systematic biological means of exploring complex diseases. However, the disparity between the production of the multiple data and our capability of analyzing data has been broaden gradually. Furthermore, we observe that networks can represent many of the above-mentioned data, and founded on the vector representations learned by network embedding methods, entities which are in close proximity but at present do not actually possess direct links are very likely to be related, therefore they are promising candidate subjects for biological investigation.ResultsWe incorporate six public biological databases to construct a heterogeneous biological network containing three categories of entities (i.e., genes, diseases, miRNAs) and multiple types of edges (i.e., the known relationships). To tackle the inherent heterogeneity, we develop a heterogeneous network embedding model for mapping the network into a low dimensional vector space in which the relationships between entities are preserved well. And in order to assess the effectiveness of our method, we conduct gene-disease as well as miRNA-disease associations predictions, results of which show the superiority of our novel method over several state-of-the-arts. Furthermore, many associations predicted by our method are verified in the latest real-world dataset.ConclusionsWe propose a novel heterogeneous network embedding method which can adequately take advantage of the abundant contextual information and structures of heterogeneous network. Moreover, we illustrate the performance of the proposed method on directing studies in biology, which can assist in identifying new hypotheses in biological investigation

Coupled microbial bloom and oxygenation decline recorded by magnetofossils during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum

Understanding marine environmental change and associated biological turnover across the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM; ~56 Ma)—the most pronounced Cenozoic short-term global warming event—is important because of the potential role of the ocean in atmospheric CO2 drawdown, yet proxies for tracing marine productivity and oxygenation across the PETM are limited and results remain controversial. Here we show that a high-resolution record of South Atlantic Ocean bottom water oxygenation can be extracted from exceptionally preserved magnetofossils—the bioinorganic magnetite nanocrystals produced by magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) using a new multiscale environmental magnetic approach. Our results suggest that a transient MTB bloom occurred due to increased nutrient supply. Bottom water oxygenation decreased gradually from the onset to the peak PETM. These observations provide a record of microbial response to the PETM and establish the value of magnetofossils as palaeoenvironmental indicators