Analgesic Effects of Triterpenoid Saponins From Stauntonia chinensis via Selective Increase in Inhibitory Synaptic Response in Mouse Cortical Neurons

Triterpenoid saponins from Stauntonia chinensis (TSS) are potential therapeutic agents because of its analgesic properties. However, the underlying mechanisms of the anti-nociceptive activity of TSS are largely unclear, especially in CNS. The present study confirmed the analgesic effect of TSS using four models of acute pain based on thermal or chemical stimuli. TSS treatment specifically impaired the threshold of thermal- and chemical-stimulated acute pain. Naloxone did not block the anti-nociceptive effects of TSS, which showed no participation of the opioid system. We investigated the electrical signal in cultured cortical neurons to explore whether TSS treatment directly affected synaptic transmission. TSS treatment selectively increased spontaneous inhibitory synaptic release and GABA induced charge transfer in mouse cortical neurons. The effects of TSS were maintained for at least 8 h in cultured neurons and in injected mice. Taken together, our results suggest that the analgesic role of TSS in cortex occurs via a particular increase in the inhibitory synaptic response at resting state, which supports TSS as a potential candidate for inflammatory pain relief

Cortex phellodendri

Cortex phellodendri is used to reduce fever and remove dampness and toxin. Berberine is an active ingredient of C. phellodendri. Berberine from Argemone ochroleuca can relax airway smooth muscle (ASM); however, whether the nonberberine component of C. phellodendri has similar relaxant action was unclear. An n-butyl alcohol extract of C. phellodendri (NBAECP, nonberberine component) was prepared, which completely inhibits high K+- and acetylcholine- (ACH-) induced precontraction of airway smooth muscle in tracheal rings and lung slices from control and asthmatic mice, respectively. The contraction induced by high K+ was also blocked by nifedipine, a selective blocker of L-type Ca2+ channels. The ACH-induced contraction was partially inhibited by nifedipine and pyrazole 3, an inhibitor of TRPC3 and STIM/Orai channels. Taken together, our data demonstrate that NBAECP can relax ASM by inhibiting L-type Ca2+ channels and TRPC3 and/or STIM/Orai channels, suggesting that NBAECP could be developed to a new drug for relieving bronchospasm

Cluster Analysis of Pedestrian Mobile Channels in Measurements and Simulations

In wireless communication systems, channels evolve when user terminals move. To further understand channel variation, and especially the evolution of clusters in mobile channels, a set of experiments was designed. First, we performed pedestrian mobile measurements in an urban macro (UMa) scenario at 3.5 GHz, and the K-power means-Kalman filter (KPMKF) algorithm was used for clustering and tracking. By this process, the trajectory of different clusters could clearly be described during measurement. The birth and death rate of clusters per snapshot show that the change of one or two clusters in each snapshot takes more probabilities. In addition, the differences of the cluster lifetime between the clustering process with and without the Kalman filter (KF) algorithm are given to show the effect from the KF. Second, channel simulations were implemented based on the above observed results. The spatial-consistency feature was introduced to get closer to the measured channels, which is based on the primary module of International Mobile Telecommunications-2020 (IMT-2020) channel model. Comparisons among measurements and simulations with and without this feature show that adding this feature improves simulation accuracy. To explore a novel method to characterize clusters during linear movement, a gradient boosted decision-tree (GBDT) algorithm is introduced. It uses the above characteristics of clusters and channel impulse responses (CIRs) as the training and validating dataset. The root mean square error (RMSE) shows that this is promising

Xanthones from the Bark of Garcinia xanthochymus and the Mechanism of Induced Apoptosis in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma HepG2 Cells via the Mitochondrial Pathway

Xanthones are important chemical constituents of Garcinia xanthochymus and varied bioactivities including cytotoxicity. However, their anti-tumor mechanism has remained unknown. Here, we isolated and identified a new xanthone named garciniaxanthone I (1) and five known compounds from the bark of G. xanthochymus. Their structures were elucidated by NMR analysis and HRESIMS. The anti-proliferation activities of all isolated compounds were evaluated on four human tumor cell lines (HepG2, A549, SGC7901, MCF-7). The results demonstrated that the anti-proliferation activity of xanthone was related to the number and location of prenyl groups. We further found that garciniaxanthone I (GXI) could induce HepG2 apoptosis and enhance the expression of cleaved caspase-8, caspase-9, and caspase-3. GXI could also increase Bax level and concurrently reduce the overexpression of Bcl-2, Bcl-XL, Mcl-1, and surviving in HepG2 cells. Moreover, GXI could inhibit cell migration of HepG2 cells by inhibiting the expressions of MMP-7 and MMP-9. In summary, our study suggests that GXI could induce HepG2 apoptosis via the mitochondrial pathway and might become a lead compound for liver cancer treatment

a selective push algorithm for cooperative cache consistency maintenance over manets

Cooperative caching is an important technique to support efficient data dissemination and sharing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). In order to ensure valid data access, the cache consistency must be maintained properly. Many existing cache consistenc

A Selective Push Algorithm for Cooperative Cache Consistency Maintenance over MANETs

Abstract. Cooperative caching is an important technique to support efficient data dissemination and sharing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). In order to ensure valid data access, the cache consistency must be maintained properly. Many existing cache consistency maintenance algorithms are stateless, in which the data source node is unaware of the cache status at each caching node. Even though stateless algorithms do not pay the cost for cache status maintenance, they mainly rely on broadcast mechanisms to propagate the data updates, thus lacking cost-effectiveness and scalability. Besides stateless algorithms, stateful algorithms can significantly reduce the consistency maintenance cost by maintaining status of the cached data and selectively propagating the data updates. Stateful algorithms are more effective in MANETs, mainly due to the bandwidth-constrained, unstable and multi-hop wireless communication. In this paper, we propose a stateful cache consistency maintenance algorithm called Greedy Walk-based Selective Push (GWSP). In GWSP, the data source node maintains the Time-to-Refresh value and the cach