Effect of Spatholobus suberectus (Fabaceae) extract on second-degree burns in rats

Purpose: To evaluate the wound-healing effect of Spatholobus suberectus (Fabaceae) on seconddegree burns in a rat model.Methods: The animals were divided into normal, negative control, as well as 10 % Spatholobus suberectus (SS) (SS10), 20 % SS (SS20) and standard (STD) groups. Second-degree burns were inflicted by exposing a 3 × 3 cm sterile area of skin to boiling water for 10 min. The animals were treated topically twice daily for 2 weeks. Wound contraction (%) was measured after 2 weeks, while wound tissue  histopathology was assessed by hematoxylin & eosin and Masson’s trichrome staining. In addition, lipid peroxidation (malondialdehyde kit) and cytokine secretion (ELISA) were measured in liver and plasma, respectively.Results: The results of this study suggest that topical application of SS for 2 weeks significantly increases wound closure compared with the negative control. Moreover, treatment with SS significantly improved the pathological status of the wound throughout the protocol. There was also a significant decrease in malondialdehyde activity and increase in cytokine release in SS-treated rats compared with control rats.Conclusions: The results show that topical application of SS after inflicting second-degree burns in rats results in increased wound healing and decreased cytokine release and oxidative stress.Keyword: Spatholobus suberectus, Burns, Wound, Lipid peroxidation, Cytokine

Quantitative characterization of the disturbance of groundwater system in typical coal seam mining in contiguous area of Inner Mongolia and Shaanxi

High-intensity mining of coal mines in ecologically fragile areas disturbs the groundwater system and causes water resources loss. The typical shallow and deep mining mines in the middle section of the Yellow River basin are selected as the research objects, and the development height of the water-conducting fracture zone in the shallow composite coal seam mining and the deep single coal seam mining is comprehensively determined by using the theoretical analysis, numerical simulation of overburden damage and the underground measurement, and the comparison with surrounding mines with similar conditions. According to the spatial location relationship between the water-conducting fracture zone and the main roof aquifer/aquiclude, the water filling model of Zhiluo Formation - Zhidan Group aquifer in shallow coal seam mining and that of Zhiluo Formation aquifer in deep coal seam mining are divided; By generalizing the groundwater flow system of different aquifer water filling modes, the three-dimensional unsteady flow mathematical model of groundwater in typical coal seam mining is constructed, and the numerical model of groundwater flow in two working conditions is established by using Visual Modflow software. The quantitative prediction of groundwater flow field and water resource loss in the mining of the continuous working face is carried out, and the results show that the groundwater from Zhidan Group and Zhiluo Formation aquifers in the disturbed aquifer is converging towards the goaf at the same time, the flow field also gradually recovers with the formation of the secondary stable structure of the roof after mining. Around the goaf, the groundwater flow field shows a local high hydraulic gradient phenomenon; In addition, the average annual water loss of the two coal mining conditions in the continuous period is more than 2 million m3 and 7.3 million m3 respectively. The research results provide a reference for the advanced fine control of regional water resources loss and the utilization of mine water resources

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY REGARDING ADHESIVE THICKNESS-DEPENDENCE OF STRENGTH FOR LIGHTWEIGHT ALLOY ADHESIVELY BONDED JOINTS

The effect of the adhesive thickness on the overall strength of single lap joints made by lightweight aluminum alloy was experimentally studied. The relation between the overall strength and the adhesive thickness is influenced by some intrinsic characteristics of adhesives,one of which is the adhesive toughness addressed by the present study. The results show that the variation of overall strength corresponding to relatively ductile adhesive is more remarkable compared to that corresponding to relatively brittle adhesive,especially in the comparatively small adhesive thickness range. When the adhesive thickness is larger than the critical thickness,the overall strength of the single lap joints appears equal to the bulk shear strength of the adhesives. The present experimental results agree with the previous model prediction

Renal Pelvic Carcinosarcoma: One Case Report and Literature Review

Renal pelvic carcinosarcoma (RPCS) is rare in clinic, and difficultto make preoperative diagnosis. One patient diagnosed as RPCS wastreated in our hospital in August 2008. We made it as a case report asfollows

Photoelectrochemical water splitting under visible light over anti-photocorrosive In2O3-coupling ZnO nanorod arrays photoanode

In2O3 quantum dots with a high crystallinity were deposited on the surface of ZnO nanorods through a chemistry bath method. The resulting In2O3-sensitizing ZnO nanorod arrays not only exhibited enhanced photoelectrochemical activity for water splitting under visible-light irradiation, but also possessed anti-photocorrosion property. The photo-induced charge-transfer property of In2O3 could be improved greatly by coupling with ZnO. This observation demonstrated that the heterojunction at the interface between In2O3 and ZnO could efficiently reduce the recombination of photo-induced electron–hole pairs and increase the lifetime of charge carriers and therefore enhance the photo-to-current efficiency of the In2O3–ZnO nanocrystalline arrays. It reveals that the heterojunction construction between two different semiconductors plays a very important role in determining the dynamic properties of their photo- generated charge carriers and their photo-to-currentconversion efficiency

Controllable Synthesis of Bi2Fe4O9 Nanocrystal with High Active Facets and the Enhanced Visible Light Photoelectrochemical Property

Bi2Fe4O9 nanocrystals with high active facets were controllably synthesized via a chemical co-precipitation process followed by a hydrothermal treatment at various microenvironment. The nanocrystals can be controlled preferentially to grow along (001) and show flat side facets of (110) and (1¯$\bar 1$10). The photoinduced charge-transfer property of Bi2Fe4O9 was significantly improved. Such a high photo-to-current conversion efficiency is ascribed to the synergistic effect of energy band structure and the high reactivity of exposed (110) and (1¯$\bar 1$10) facets. The high surface energy at the interface of the Bi2Fe4O9 efficiently reduced the recombination of photoinduced electron-hole pairs, and thus increasing the lifetime of charge carriers and enhancing the photo-to-current efficiency of the Bi2Fe4O9

β-tricalcium phosphate/gelatin composite scaffolds incorporated with gentamycin-loaded chitosan microspheres for infected bone defect treatment

The repair of infected bone defects remains a clinical challenge. Staphylococcus aureus is a common pathogenic micro-organism associated with such infections. Gentamycin (GM) is a broad spectrum antibiotic that can kill S. aureus in a dose-dependent manner. However, the systemic administration of antibiotics may lead to drug resistance and gut dysbiosis. In this work, we constructed β-tricalcium phosphate/gelatin composite scaffolds incorporated with gentamycin-loaded chitosan microspheres (CMs(GM)-β-TCP/gelatin composite scaffolds), which helped optimize the local GM release in the infected defect areas and enhance bone regeneration. The cumulative release curves showed that both microspheres and composite scaffolds reached a sustained slow-release phase after the initial rapid release, and the latter further stabilized the initial drug release rate. The release curve of CMs(GM)-β-TCP/gelatin composite scaffolds reached a plateau after 24 h, and the cumulative release reached 41.86% during this period. Moreover, the combination of β-TCP and gelatin mimicked bone composition and were able to provide the requisite mechanical strength (0.82 ± 0.05 MPa) during the first phase of bone generation. The inner structure of the scaffold was arranged in the shape of interconnected pores, and presented a porosity level of 16%. The apertures were uniform in size, which was beneficial for cell proliferation and material transportation. Macroscopic observation and histological analysis showed that CMs(GM)-β-TCP/gelatin composite scaffolds fused with bone tissues, and new tissues were formed in defect areas without any infection. This new composite scaffold may be a promising repair material for treating infected bone defects

Controllable Synthesis of Bi

Bi2Fe4O9 nanocrystals with high active facets were controllably synthesized via a chemical co-precipitation process followed by a hydrothermal treatment at various microenvironment. The nanocrystals can be controlled preferentially to grow along (001) and show flat side facets of (110) and ($\bar 1$10). The photoinduced charge-transfer property of Bi2Fe4O9 was significantly improved. Such a high photo-to-current conversion efficiency is ascribed to the synergistic effect of energy band structure and the high reactivity of exposed (110) and ($\bar 1$10) facets. The high surface energy at the interface of the Bi2Fe4O9 efficiently reduced the recombination of photoinduced electron-hole pairs, and thus increasing the lifetime of charge carriers and enhancing the photo-to-current efficiency of the Bi2Fe4O9