Aβ Damages Learning and Memory in Alzheimer's Disease Rats with Kidney-Yang Deficiency

Previous studies demonstrated that Alzheimer's disease was considered as the consequence produced by deficiency of Kidney essence. However, the mechanism underlying the symptoms also remains elusive. Here we report that spatial learning and memory, escape, and swimming capacities were damaged significantly in Kidney-yang deficiency rats. Indeed, both hippocampal Aβ40 and 42 increases in Kidney-yang deficiency contribute to the learning and memory impairments. Specifically, damage of synaptic plasticity is involved in the learning and memory impairment of Kidney-yang deficiency rats. We determined that the learning and memory damage in Kidney-yang deficiency due to synaptic plasticity impairment and increases of Aβ40 and 42 was not caused via NMDA receptor internalization induced by Aβ increase. β-Adrenergic receptor agonist can rescue the impaired long-term potential (LTP) in Kidney-yang rats. Taken together, our results suggest that spatial learning and memory inhibited in Kidney-yang deficiency might be induced by Aβ increase and the decrease of β2 receptor function in glia

Germplasm Evaluation of an Eurasia Steppe Native Specie--Sheepgrass (\u3cem\u3eLeymus chinensis\u3c/em\u3e)

Sheepgrass (Leymus chinensis (Trin.) Tzvel) is an advantageous perennial native grass in China and other northern Eurasian countries having steppe. As an important forage grass of great value in animal husbandry, sheepgrass is well known for its abundant foliage, high palatability and high nutritive content. Sheepgrass is also valuable in grassland restoration and conservation since it is a perennial grass with a rhizome network to fix the soil and can survive well in stressful environments. Terefore, the collection, evaluation and utilization of sheepgrass are necessary for protecting grassland biodiversity, for establishing artificial pasture, restoring degraded grassland, and the development of forage industry and animal husbandry in Eurasia’s native steppe. Here, we reviewed our previous studies on the collection, evaluation of phenotypic diversity for germplasm resources, distribution and domestication of wild sheepgrass, and application of sheepgrass new varieties

Experimental Study on the Reaction of Cuprite (Cu2O) with Acetate-Bearing Hydrothermal Fluids at 100-250 °C and 5-30 MPa

To improve our understanding of the formation of sedimentary copper deposits, the reaction of cuprite with 0.2 m HAc-KAc or pure H2O solutions is studied systematically at 100-250 °C and 5-30 MPa. The experiments were carried out for periods of up to 72 h in a Parr autoclave, allowing for the in situ sampling of the fluid phase. The experiments conducted in this study demonstrate that cuprite (Cu2O) underwent a series of changes: (i) simple dissolution, (ii) Cu(I) disproportionation to native Cu and Cu(II), and (iii) subsequent oxidation into tenorite (CuO). In pure water, only (i) and (ii) steps can be discerned, whereas all three processes have been observed in an acetate-bearing system. In HAc-KAc solutions, the maximum dissolved Cu content correlates inversely with temperature, i.e., 378 to 168 μg/g at 100 and 200 °C, respectively. However, equilibrium has not been reached in our experiments and these values may be treated as minimum cuprite solubility. In situ Cu isotope analyses have been carried out by laser ablation combined with a multicollector inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer. The data imply that copper isotope fractionation during cuprite replacement reactions is small. Both the microscopic observations on cross sections and the analytical data support the idea that the mineral replacement reaction is controlled by a coupled dissolution-reprecipitation (CDR) mechanism. This applies to both the deposition of metallic copper and the formation of tenorite. As suggested by the formation of pore spaces in the deposited layers, only a portion of the dissolved copper is redeposited directly in situ. The isotopic analyses of the solution and solid phases show that the partial transfer of copper into the surrounding solution is not associated with a significant isotopic effect, e.g., a measured difference between Cu and Cu2O is within 0.32 ± 0.06‰. Our study indicates that acetate plays a dual role in copper transport and deposition. On one hand, the presence of acetate strongly enhances the Cu content in solution up to 400 μg/g, implying that acetate complexation can be responsible for metal transport in hydrothermal fluids. On the other hand, decarboxylation of acetate substantially decreases the dissolved Cu and aids the precipitation of tenorite. This may lead to the co-occurrence of Cu-bearing minerals with different oxidation valence states at low temperatures in a variety of geological settings such as supergene hydrothermal systems

Tocopherol attenuates the oxidative stress of BMSCs by inhibiting ferroptosis through the PI3k/AKT/mTOR pathway

Oxidative stress can induce bone tissue damage and the occurrence of multiple diseases. As a type of traditional medicine, tocopherol has been reported to have a strong antioxidant effect and contributes to osteogenic differentiation. The purpose of this study was to investigate the protective effect of tocopherol on the oxidative stress of rat bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) and the underlying mechanisms. By establishing an oxidative stress model in vitro, the cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8), reactive oxygen species (ROS) analysis, Western blot (WB), real-time PCR (RT-PCR), alkaline phosphatase (ALP) staining, and Alizarin Red staining (ARS) evaluated the effects of tocopherol on the cell viability, intracellular ROS levels, and osteogenic differentiation in BMSCs. In addition, ferroptosis-related markers were examined via Western blot, RT-PCR, and Mito-FerroGreen. Eventually, the PI3K/AKT/mTOR signaling pathway was explored. We found that tocopherol significantly maintained the cell viability, reduced intracellular ROS levels, upregulated the levels of anti-oxidative genes, promoted the levels of osteogenic-related proteins, and the mRNA of BMSCs stimulated by H2O2. More importantly, tocopherol inhibited ferroptosis and upregulated the phosphorylation levels of PI3K, AKT, and mTOR of BMSCs upon H2O2 stimulation. In summary, tocopherol protected BMSCs from oxidative stress damage via the inhibition of ferroptosis through the PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway

Preparation, characterization and targeting of micronized 10-hydroxycamptothecin-loaded folate-conjugated human serum albumin nanoparticles to cancer cells

Qingyong Li, Chen Liu, Xiuhua Zhao, Yuangang Zu, Ying Wang, Baoyou Zhang, Dongmei Zhao, Qi Zhao, Lin Su, Yang Gao, Baihe SunKey Laboratory of Forest Plant Ecology, Ministry of Education, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin, Heilongjiang, People's Republic of ChinaBackground: The purpose of this study was to develop a method for targeted delivery of 10-hydroxycamptothecin (HCPT)-loaded nanoparticles (NPs) to cancer cells.Methods: We first used a supercritical antisolvent process to prepare micronized HCPT (nHCPT), and then folate-conjugated human serum albumin (HSA) nHCPT-loaded NPs (FA-HSA-nHCPT-NPs) were prepared using a NP-coated method combined with a desolvation technique. The amount of folate conjugation was 16 µg · mg-1 HSA.Results: The particle size of the spherical nHCPT microparticles obtained was 118.5 ± 6.6 nm. The particle size and zeta potential of the FA-HSA-nHCPT-NPs were 233.9 ± 1.2 nm and -25.23 ± 2.98 mV, respectively. The FA-HSA-nHCPT-NPs exhibited a smooth surface and a distinct spherical shape, and the results of differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray diffraction indicated that the FA-HSA-nHCPT-NPs presented in a nanostructured amorphous state. The FA-HSA-nHCPT-NPs showed sustained-release characteristics for 120 hours in vitro, with a drug-loading content of 7.3% and an encapsulating efficiency of 79.1%.Conclusion: The FA-NPs were effective delivery systems for uptake by SGC7901 cells compared with folate-free NPs. These results suggest that a NP-coated method combined with a desolvation technique is effective for preparing NPs with drugs having poor solubility in water and most organic solvents, using albumin as the wall material. FA-HSA-NPs are a stable delivery system and have the potential for targeted delivery of anticancer drugs.Keywords: nanoparticle-coated, desolvation technique, 10-hydroxycamptothecin, human serum albumin, folate, targeted delivery&nbsp

Deep learning with multi-scale feature fusion in remote sensing for automatic oceanic eddy detection

Oceanic eddies are ubiquitous in global oceans and play a major role in ocean energy transfer and nutrients distribution, thus being significant for understanding ocean current circulation and marine climate change. They are characterized by a combination of high-speed vertical rotations and horizontal movements, leading to irregular three-dimensional spiral structures. While the ability to detect eddies automatically and remotely is crucial to monitoring important spatial-temporal dynamics, existing methods are inaccurate because eddies are highly dynamic and the underlying physical processes are not well understood. Typically, remote sensing is used to detect eddies based on physical parameters, geometrics or other handcrafted features. In this paper, we show how Deep Learning may be used to reliably extract higher-level features and then fuse multi-scale features to identify eddies, regardless of their structures and scales. We learn eddy features using two principal component analysis convolutional layers, then perform a non-linear transformation of the features through a binary hashing layer and block-wise histograms. To handle the difficult problem of spatial variability across synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images, we introduce a spatial pyramid model to allow multi-scale features fusion. Finally, a linear support vector machine classifier recognizes the eddies. Our method, dubbed DeepEddy, is benchmarked against a dataset of 20,000 SAR image samples, achieving a 97.8 ± 1% accuracy of detection

COIN: Chance-Constrained Imitation Learning for Uncertainty-aware Adaptive Resource Oversubscription Policy

We address the challenge of learning safe and robust decision policies in presence of uncertainty in context of the real scientific problem of adaptive resource oversubscription to enhance resource efficiency while ensuring safety against resource congestion risk. Traditional supervised prediction or forecasting models are ineffective in learning adaptive policies whereas standard online optimization or reinforcement learning is difficult to deploy on real systems. Offline methods such as imitation learning (IL) are ideal since we can directly leverage historical resource usage telemetry. But, the underlying aleatoric uncertainty in such telemetry is a critical bottleneck. We solve this with our proposed novel chance-constrained imitation learning framework, which ensures implicit safety against uncertainty in a principled manner via a combination of stochastic (chance) constraints on resource congestion risk and ensemble value functions. This leads to substantial ($\approx 3-4\times$) improvement in resource efficiency and safety in many oversubscription scenarios, including resource management in cloud services.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Germination characteristics among different sheepgrass (Leymus chinensis) germplasm during the seed development and after-ripening stages

Sheepgrass (Leymus chinensis (Trin.) Tzvel) is an important forage grass in the Eurasian steppe. However, little information is available concerning its seed morphological features and germination characteristics during seed development and after-ripening among different germplasm. To clarify the appropriate seed harvest time and the effects of germplasm, seed development and after-ripening on seed germination, 20 germplasm of sheepgrass were selected. Moreover, the seed morphological and physical changes as well as the seed germination and dormancy characteristics of sheepgrass during seed development stages were analyzed using a seven—d gradient of day after pollination (DAP). The results indicated that the seed water content decreased significantly during 35–42 DAP and that the highest seed germination rate of most germplasm was observed at 35–42 DAP. Thus, 35–42 DAP may be the best time to harvest sheepgrass to obtain the maximum seed germination rate and avoid seed shattering. Furthermore, our results indicated that there were six types of germination patterns, including germplasm with increasing germination rates in the developing seed, such as S19 and S13, and germplasm that maintained a consistently low germination rate, such as S10. Moreover, we compared the seed germination rate of eight germplasm during seed development in both 2016 and 2017, and the results indicated that the seed germination patterns of the eight germplasm were highly consistent between the two consecutive years, suggesting that germplasm rather than year is the major factor in determining germination during seed development. The effect of after-ripening on seed germination was different among the germplasm where four types of germination patterns were revealed for 10 germplasm and resulted in various dormancy features. A two-factor ANOVA analysis suggested that the germplasm of the sheepgrass has a large influence on seed germination, whether during seed development or after-ripening. Thus, these findings lay the foundation for future studies on seed dormancy and germination and may guide the breeding of new cultivars of sheepgrass with better germination performance

Spermidine improves the antioxidant capacity and morphology of intestinal tissues and regulates intestinal microorganisms in Sichuan white geese

IntroductionIntestinal health is very important to the health of livestock and poultry, and is even a major determining factor in the performance of livestock and poultry production. Spermidine is a type of polyamine that is commonly found in a variety of foods, and can resist oxidative stress, promote cell proliferation and regulate intestinal flora.MethodsIn this study, we explored the effects of spermidine on intestinal health under physiological states or oxidative stress conditions by irrigation with spermidine and intraperitoneal injection of 3-Nitropropionic acid (3-NPA) in Sichuan white goose.Results and discussionOur results showed that spermidine could increase the ratio of intestinal villus to crypt and improve intestinal morphology. In addition, spermidine can also reduce malondialdehyde (MDA) accumulation caused by 3-NPA by increasing superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and glutathione peroxidase (GPX) enzyme activity, thus alleviating intestinal damage. Furthermore, spermidine can regulate intestinal digestive enzyme activities and affect intestinal digestion and absorption ability. Spermidine can also promote an increase in intestinal microbial diversity and abundance and alleviate the change of microflora structure caused by 3-NPA. In conclusion, spermidine promotes the production of beneficial intestinal metabolites such as Wikstromol, Alpha-bisabolol and AS 1–5, thus improving the level of intestinal health. Taken together, these results indicate that spermidine can improve intestinal health by improving intestinal morphology, increasing antioxidant capacity and regulating intestinal flora structure

Aberrant Dynamic Functional Network Connectivity and Graph Properties in Major Depressive Disorder

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a complex mood disorder characterized by persistent and overwhelming depression. Previous studies have identified abnormalities in large scale functional brain networks in MDD, yet most of them were based on static functional connectivity. In contrast, here we explored disrupted topological organization of dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) in MDD based on graph theory. One hundred and eighty-two MDD patients and 218 healthy controls were included in this study, all Chinese Han people. By applying group information guided independent component analysis (GIG-ICA) to resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data, the dFNCs of each subject were estimated using a sliding window method and k-means clustering. Network properties including global efficiency, local efficiency, node strength and harmonic centrality, were calculated for each subject. Five dynamic functional states were identified, three of which demonstrated significant group differences in their percentage of state occurrence. Interestingly, MDD patients spent much more time in a weakly-connected State 2, which includes regions previously associated with self-focused thinking, a representative feature of depression. In addition, the FNCs in MDD were connected differently in different states, especially among prefrontal, sensorimotor, and cerebellum networks. MDD patients exhibited significantly reduced harmonic centrality primarily involving parietal lobule, lingual gyrus and thalamus. Moreover, three dFNCs with disrupted node properties were commonly identified in different states, and also correlated with depressive symptom severity and cognitive performance. This study is the first attempt to investigate the dynamic functional abnormalities in MDD in a Chinese population using a relatively large sample size, which provides new evidence on aberrant time-varying brain activity and its network disruptions in MDD, which might underscore the impaired cognitive functions in this mental disorder