Morfological features and phenylpropanoid contents of natural and cultivated Rhodiola rosea roots in Finland

Root samples of Rhodiola rosea were collected from three places during June 2006 and the morphological and chemical features were compared to cultivated accessions

Processing of Rhodiola rosea and Bergenia crassifolia raw materials for dry extracts

The aim of the research was the processing of standardised dry extracts from root yield of Rhodiola rosea and leave yield of Bergenia sp. The plants were cultivated in the experimental field of MTT Mikkeli, Finland during 2002-2006

Variation of arbutin content in Bergenia sp. leaves

The common garden perennial, Bergenia, should be utilized as a special new crop for raw material production in the cosmetic industry, producing arbutin. Under open field and full sun conditions, the arbutin contents of Bergenia leaves have not changed significantly

Length-Controlled AlpacaEval: A Simple Way to Debias Automatic Evaluators

LLM-based auto-annotators have become a key component of the LLM development process due to their cost-effectiveness and scalability compared to human-based evaluation. However, these auto-annotators can introduce complex biases that are hard to remove. Even simple, known confounders such as preference for longer outputs remain in existing automated evaluation metrics. We propose a simple regression analysis approach for controlling biases in auto-evaluations. As a real case study, we focus on reducing the length bias of AlpacaEval, a fast and affordable benchmark for chat LLMs that uses LLMs to estimate response quality. Despite being highly correlated with human preferences, AlpacaEval is known to favor models that generate longer outputs. We introduce a length-controlled AlpacaEval that aims to answer the counterfactual question: "What would the preference be if the model's and baseline's output had the same length?". To achieve this, we first fit a generalized linear model to predict the biased output of interest (auto-annotator preferences) based on the mediators we want to control for (length difference) and other relevant features. We then obtain length-controlled preferences by predicting preferences while conditioning the GLM with a zero difference in lengths. Length-controlling not only improves the robustness of the metric to manipulations in model verbosity, we also find that it increases the Spearman correlation with LMSYS' Chatbot Arena from 0.94 to 0.98. We release the code and leaderboard at https://tatsu-lab.github.io/alpaca_eval/

Systematic reviews of observational studies of Risk of Thrombosis and Bleeding in General and Gynecologic Surgery (ROTBIGGS): introduction and methodology

Background: Venous thromboembolism (VTE) and bleeding are serious and potentially fatal complications of surgical procedures. Pharmacological thromboprophylaxis decreases the risk of VTE but increases the risk of major post-operative bleeding. The decision to use pharmacologic prophylaxis therefore represents a trade-off that critically depends on the incidence of VTE and bleeding in the absence of prophylaxis. These baseline risks vary widely between procedures, but their magnitude is uncertain. Systematic reviews addressing baseline risks are scarce, needed, and require innovations in methodology. Indeed, systematic summaries of these baseline risk estimates exist neither in general nor gynecologic surgery. We will fill this knowledge gap by performing a series of systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the procedure-specific and patient risk factor stratified risk estimates in general and gynecologic surgeries.Methods: We will perform comprehensive literature searches for observational studies in general and gynecologic surgery reporting symptomatic VTE or bleeding estimates. Pairs of methodologically trained reviewers will independently assess the studies for eligibility, evaluate the risk of bias by using an instrument developed for this review, and extract data. We will perform meta-analyses and modeling studies to adjust the reported risk estimates for the use of thromboprophylaxis and length of follow up. We will derive the estimates of risk from the median estimates of studies rated at the lowest risk of bias. The primary outcomes are the risk estimates of symptomatic VTE and major bleeding at 4 weeks post-operatively for each procedure stratified by patient risk factors. We will apply the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach to rate evidence certainty.Discussion: This series of systematic reviews, modeling studies, and meta-analyses will inform clinicians and patients regarding the trade-off between VTE prevention and bleeding in general and gynecologic surgeries. Our work advances the standards in systematic reviews of surgical complications, including assessment of risk of bias, criteria for arriving at the best estimates of risk (including modeling of the timing of events and dealing with suboptimal data reporting), dealing with subgroups at higher and lower risk of bias, and use of the GRADE approach.Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42021234119</p

Demand and availability of Rhodiola rosea raw material

Rhodiola rosea L. roseroot, (Golden root or Arctic root) is a herbaceous perennial plant of the family Crassulaceae. The yellow-flowered roseroot species is a circumpolar species of cool temperate and sub-arctic areas of the northern hemisphere, including North America, Greenland, Iceland and the Altai, Tien-Shan, Himalaya mountains in Asia. The European distribution includes Scandinavia and most of the mountains of Central Europe. Roseroot has traditionally been used in Russia and Mongolia for the treatment of long-term illness and weakness caused by infection. Rhodiola radix and rhizome is a multipurpose medicinal herb with adaptogenic properties: it increases the body’s nonspecific resistance and normalizes body functions. A special emphasis in pharmacological research has been put on roseroot in the former Soviet Union. Several clinical studies have documented roseroot’s beneficial effects on memory and learning, immuneresponse stress and cancer therapy. Rhodiola preparations have widely been used to increase the stress tolerance of the cosmonauts. Salidroside and its precursor tyrosol, and cinnamic glycosides (rosin, rosavin and rosarin) have been identified from the roots and rhizome. Other important constituents are flavonoids, tannins and gallic acid and its esters (Brown et al. 2002). Based on the documented pharmacological effects and its safe use, the commercial interest for roseroot-based products has quickly increased worldwide. Presently one of the biggest problems is to meet the raw-material requirement for the growing industrial demand. Nearly all raw material originates from the natural populations. The largest populations are situated in the Altai area of South Siberia. Due to the intensive collection, natural populations are severely threatened. Roseroot is on the Russian Red List and its collection is nowadays strongly regulated. The collecting activities in the European countries have less economical importance, because collection and transport costs are high in the mountain areas. Roseroot cultivation seems to be the only solution to produce raw material in sufficient quantities for industrial purposes. Cultivation experiments have been carried out in several parts of the former Soviet Union, Poland and Sweden. Due to national industrial interest, domestication experiments were carried out also in Finland in 1994 - 2002. The first cultivation technologies for roseroot have been introduced in practice. Roseroot can be grown successfully in South Finland using organic growing methods. The dry root yields ranged between 1.5 and 3.0 ton/ha in South Finland. However, cultivation of roseroot has its own problems. The cultivation costs are high, because the field cultures have to be established by transplantation of seedlings, the cultivation period from planting to harvesting is five years long and the root harvest and post-harvest processing are labour-intensive. For the continuous supply of industrial raw material, new plantations have to be established every year. A stable financial background seems to be necessary for the growers involved in large-scale production of roseroot raw materia

Neljän kamomillalajikkeen kukkasato ja haihtuvien öljyjen pitoisuudet Suomessa v. 1985—1988

Four chamomile (Matricaria recutita L.) varieties were grown at Puumala, Finland (61°40' N, 28°15' E) in 1985—1989 from spring sowings on stony till soil, pH 5.8. The weather conditions in the experimental years were very different. For instance between 1987 and 1988 there was a difference of 5,3°C in the mean temperature of the growing periods (May- September). The four-year average of the fresh flower yield was 0.4 (0.1 —0.7) kg/m2. The yields varied greatly depending on the number of harvests, which depended on the weather conditions. One harvest could be obtained in 1986 and 1987, two in 1985 and three in 1988. In spite of the different weather conditions there were no differences in the content and composition of the essential oil distilled from the dry flowers.Vaikka kamomilla (Matricaria recutita L.) kasvaa Suomessa luonnonvaraisena rohdoskasvina käyttävät lääketeollisuus ja luontaistuotekaupat ulkomailta tuotua kamomillaa. Hälvän (1985) selvityksen mukaan maahamme tuotiin esim. v. 1982 8700 kg kamomillan kukkaa, jonka arvo oli 521 000 mk. Lääketeollisuus vaatii kamomillalle tiettyä kemiallista koostumusta, joten eri kemotyyppien tutkimus on välttämätöntä pohjoisissa ilmasto-olosuhteissa. Kamomillan viljelytutkimus kuului Helsingin yliopiston v. 1984 aloittamaan Puumalan mausteprojektiin. Siina tutkittiin Suomen olosuhteisiin sopivia viljelymenetelmiä ja niiden koneellistamista sekä eri lajikkeiden viihtyvyyttä. Pirttimäen koetilalla tutkittiin v. 1985—1988 neljän lajikkeen satoisuutta ja viihtyvyyttä. Lajikkeet olivat unkarilainen tetraploidi Budakalaszi-2 sekä diploidit länsisaksalainen Degumille, unkarilainen Csömöri ja tsekkoslovakialainen Bona. Kamomillan siemeniä kylvettiin keväällä 5 kg/ha hajakylvönä maan pinnalle muokattuun maahan 10 m 2:n koeruutuihin. Kokeessa oli kaksi kerrannetta, maalajina hiekkamoreeni jamaan pH -arvo 5,8. Koealueelle levitettiin typpeä 50 kg/ha, fosforia 80 kg/ha ja kaliumia 85 kg/ha. Kukkasato korjattiin kasipuimurilla riipien ja lajiteltiin 18mm:n seulalla. Kaikki kukat eivät irtoa puinnin ja lajittelun aikana. Osa sadosta muodostuu varsista, joissa kukat ovat yhä jäljellä. Tämä ns. kamomillan heinäsato on sopivaa kemialliseen jatkojalostukseen uuttamis- ja tislaamismenetelmien avulla. Viljelyvuosien sää olosuhteet vaihtelivat paljon. Vuosina 1986 ja 1988 kasvukausi oli 2—4°C keskimääräistä lämpimämpi ja sademäärä vastaavasti keskimääräistä pienempi. Vuonna 1987 kasvukausi oli 3°C keskimääräistä kylmempi ja myös sateinen. Kasvukauden saa vaikutti merkittävästi kamomillankukka- ja heinäsatoon. Vuonna 1985 saatiin korjattua kaksi satoa, mutta kahtena seuraavana vuonna vain yksi onnistunut sato. Paras tulos saavutettiin v. 1988, jolloin satoa korjattiin kolme kertaa. Lajikkeiden tuorekukkasato oli neljän vuoden keskiarvona 0.4 kg/m2 ja tuore heinäsato 0.2 kg/m2. Tämä vastaa keskieurooppalaista kevätkylvöstä saatua satoa, jota saadaan yleensä vähemmän kuin syyskylvöstä. Kuivattujen kukkien kemiallinen analyysi osoittaa, että tetraploidi lajikeon bisabololoksidi-A -tyyppiä ja diploidit lajikkeet ovat alfa-bisabololi -tyyppiä. Lajikkeiden haihtuvan öljyn pitoisuuksissa ja koostumuksessa ei tapahtunut merkittäviä muutoksia, vaikka viljelyvuosien sääolosuhteet vaihtelivatkin paljon. Tämä viljelytutkimus antoi näytön siitä, että eteläisessä Suomessa on mahdollista saada hyvälaatuinen kamomillan kukkasato. Tulevaisuudessa onkin tarpeellista tutkia myös kamomillan syyskylvöä ja sen vaikutusta sadon määrään