Graptopetalum paraguayense

Role of inflammation-induced oxidative stress in the pathogenesis and progression of chronic inflammatory airways diseases has received increasing attention in recent years. Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 is the primary transcription factor that regulates the expression of antioxidant and detoxifying enzymes. Graptopetalum paraguayense E. Walther, a vegetable consumed in Taiwan, has been used in folk medicine for protection against liver injury through elevating antioxidation. Recently, we found that gallic acid is an active compound of Graptopetalum paraguayense E. Walther, which has been reported to inhibit T-helper 2 cytokines. Currently, we assumed that Graptopetalum paraguayense E. Walther may potentially protect against ovalbumin-induced allergy and airway inflammation. Results demonstrated that Graptopetalum paraguayense E. Walther ethanolic extracts (GPE) clearly inhibited airway inflammation, mucus cell hyperplasia, and eosinophilia in OVA-challenged mice. Additionally, GPE also prevented T-cell infiltration and Th2 cytokines, including interleukin- (IL-)4, IL-5, and IL-13 generations in bronchial alveolar lavage fluid. The adhesion molecules ICAM-1 and VCAM-1 were substantially reduced by GPE treatment mediated by Nrf2 activation. Moreover, GPE attenuated GATA3 expression and inhibited Th2 signals of the T cells. These findings suggested that GPE ameliorated the development of airway inflammation through immune regulation

RISK OF SLEEP DISORDERS IN PATIENTS WITH DECOMPRESSION SICKNESS: A NATIONWIDE, POPULATION-BASED STUDY IN TAIWAN

Background: Decompression sickness (DCS) primarily manifests musculoskeletal pain, cutaneous manifestations, lymphatic symptoms, and neurological symptoms. DCS might affect the central nervous system and induce the stress in the patients, but few studies about the psychiatric morbidity after DCS have been conducted. This study aimed to investigate the association between DCS and the risk of developing psychiatric disorders. Subjects and methods: This study was a population-based, matched cohort design. A total of 738 enrolled patients, with 123 study subjects who had suffered from DCS, and 615 controls matched for sex and age, from the Longitudinal Health Insurance Databank from 2000-2010 in Taiwan, and selected from the National Health Insurance Research Database. After adjusting for the confounding factors, Cox proportional hazards analysis was used to compare the risk of developing psychiatric disorders during the 10 years of follow-up period. Results: Of the study subjects, 10 (8.13%) developed psychiatric disorders when compared to 35 (5.69%) in the control group. The study subjects were more likely to develop psychiatric disorders (crude hazard ratio [HR]: 2.79 (95% CI=1.37-5.69, P<0.01). After adjusting for sex, age, monthly income, urbanization level, geographic region, and comorbidities, the adjusted HR was 3.83 (95% CI=1.60-9.16, P<0.01). Sleep disorders was associated with DCS with the adjusted HR as 5.74 (95% CI=1.04-31.56, P<0.01). Hyperbaric oxygenation therapy was not associated with a lower risk of psychiatric disorders. Conclusions: Patients who suffered from DCS have a 3.8-fold risk of developing psychiatric disorders, and a 5.7-fold risk of sleep disorders. This finding is a reminder for the clinicians that a regular psychiatric follow-up might well be needed for these patients

Simple Yet Powerful Native Language Identification on TOEFL11

Abstract Native language identification (NLI) is the task to determine the native language of the author based on an essay written in a second language. NLI is often treated as a classification problem. In this paper, we use the TOEFL11 data set which consists of more data, in terms of the amount of essays and languages, and less biased across prompts, i.e., topics, of essays. We demonstrate that even using word level n-grams as features, and support vector machine (SVM) as a classifier can yield nearly 80% accuracy. We observe that the accuracy of a binary-based word level ngram representation (~80%) is much better than the performance of a frequency-based word level n-gram representation (~20%). Notably, comparable results can be achieved without removing punctuation marks, suggesting a very simple baseline system for NLI

Hyperbaric oxygen upregulates cochlear constitutive nitric oxide synthase

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a known adjuvant for treating ischemia-related inner ear diseases. Controversies still exist in the role of HBOT in cochlear diseases. Few studies to date have investigated the cellular changes that occur in inner ears after HBOT. Nitric oxide, which is synthesized by nitric oxide synthase (NOS), is an important signaling molecule in cochlear physiology and pathology. Here we investigated the effects of hyperbaric oxygen on eardrum morphology, cochlear function and expression of NOS isoforms in cochlear substructures after repetitive HBOT in guinea pigs.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Minor changes in the eardrum were observed after repetitive HBOT, which did not result in a significant hearing threshold shift by tone burst auditory brainstem responses. A differential effect of HBOT on the expression of NOS isoforms was identified. Upregulation of constitutive NOS (nNOS and eNOS) was found in the substructures of the cochlea after HBOT, but inducible NOS was not found in normal or HBOT animals, as shown by immunohistochemistry. There was no obvious DNA fragmentation present in this HBOT animal model.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The present evidence indicates that the customary HBOT protocol may increase constitutive NOS expression but such upregulation did not cause cell death in the treated cochlea. The cochlear morphology and auditory function are consequently not changed through the protocol.</p