Plantamajoside modulates immune dysregulation and hepatic lipid metabolism in rats with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease via AMPK/Nrf2 elevation

Abstract Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a hepatic metabolic syndrome with a rapidly increasing prevalence globally. Plantamajoside (PMS), a phenylethanoid glycoside component extracted from Plantago asiatica, has various biological properties. However, its effect on NAFLD remains unknown. The study aimed to explore the effect and mechanism of PMS on NAFLD in the high‐fat diet (HFD)‐feeding rats. PMS induced a decrease in body and liver weight, and the amelioration in the blood lipid parameters and pathological symptoms in HFD‐feeding rats. The increase in the serum concentrations and the relative protein expressions of proinflammatory factors was decreased by the PMS treatment in HFD‐induced NAFLD rats. Additionally, PMS reduced the excessive lipid vacuoles, and modified the relative expressions of proteins involved in the fatty acid synthesis and uptake in HFD‐feeding rats. Mechanically, the downregulation of AMPK/Nrf2 pathway in HFD‐feeding rats was restored by the PMS treatment. Inhibition of AMPK pathway reversed the PMS‐induced the increase in the level of inflammatory factors, pathological symptoms, excessive lipid vacuoles, and the relative expression of proteins involved in the fatty acid synthesis and uptake. Collectively, PMS ameliorated immune dysregulation and abnormal hepatic lipid metabolism by activating AMPK/Nrf2 pathway in rats with NAFLD

Core Competencies for Scientific Editors of Biomedical Journals: Consensus Statement

Background: Scientific editors are responsible for deciding which articles to publish in their journals. However, we have not found documentation of their required knowledge, skills, and characteristics, nor the existence of any formal core competencies for this role. Methods: We describe the development of a minimum set of core competencies for scientific editors of biomedical journals. Results: The 14 key core competencies are divided into three major areas and each competency has a list of associated elements or descriptions of more specific knowledge, skills, and characteristics that contribute to its fulfilment. Conclusion: We believe that these core competencies are a baseline of the knowledge, skills, and characteristics needed to perform competently the duties of a scientific editor at a biomedical journal

The Stellar Abundances and Galactic Evolution Survey (SAGES). I. General Description and the First Data Release (DR1)

The Stellar Abundances and Galactic Evolution Survey (SAGES) of the northern sky is a specifically designed multiband photometric survey aiming to provide reliable stellar parameters with accuracy comparable to those from low-resolution optical spectra. It was carried out with the 2.3 m Bok telescope of Steward Observatory and three other telescopes. The observations in the u _s and v _s passband produced over 36,092 frames of images in total, covering a sky area of ∼9960 deg ^2 . The median survey completenesses of all observing fields for the two bands are u _s = 20.4 mag and v _s = 20.3 mag, respectively, while the limiting magnitudes with signal-to-noise ratio of 100 are u _s ∼ 17 mag and v _s ∼ 18 mag, correspondingly. We combined our catalog with the data release 1 (DR1) of the first Panoramic Survey Telescope And Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS, PS1) catalog, and obtained a total of 48,553,987 sources that have at least one photometric measurement in each of the SAGES u _s and v _s and PS1 grizy passbands. This is the DR1 of SAGES, released in this paper. We compared our gri point-source photometry with those of PS1 and found an rms scatter of ∼2% difference between PS1 and SAGES for the same band. We estimated an internal photometric precision of SAGES to be of the order of ∼1%. Astrometric precision is better than 0.″2 based on comparison with DR1 of the Gaia mission. In this paper, we also describe the final end-user database, and provide some science applications