The protective effect of ginko bilboa leaves injection on the brain dopamine in the rat model of cerebral ischemia/reperfusion injury

Background: Ginkgo Bilboa injection has had been clinically applied to restore the damaged cells and tissues due to the ischemia through improving the cerebral blood supply and decreasing the oxygen consumption.ObjectiveAim: To evaluate the Ginkgo Bilboa injection's therapeutic role towards ischemia/ reperfusion (I/R) injury through determination of monoamine neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) in corpus striatum.Methods: After the incomplete global cerebral ischemia and reperfusion models were prepared, rats were randomly assigned into four groups: sham-operated group, ischemia-reperfusion group, nimodipine injection group, and Ginkgo Biloba injection group. The cerebrospinal fluid in the rat brain striatum at different time points was collected with microdialysis, and the level of monoamine neurotransmitters dopamineDA was determined by high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with electrochemical detector (ECD).Results: The dopamineDA content in cerebral ischemia model group was significantly higher than that in the sham-operated group (P<0.05) at the 30 min. However, the DA level in nimodipine injection group and Ginkgo Biloba injection group were lower than the model group (P<0.05). The dopamineDA level in Ginkgo Biloba injection group gradually decreased, and was significantly different from the model group (P<0.05).Conclusion: Ginkgo Biloba injection can could significantly inhibit brain I/R injury, as demonstrated by prevention of excessive release of dopamineDA in striatum.Key Words: MD-HPLC-ECD; Ginkgo Biloba injection; ischemia/reperfusion; dopamineD

Structural Simplification of Bedaquiline: the Discovery of 3-(4-(N,N-dimethylaminomethyl)phenyl)quinoline Derived Antitubercular Lead Compounds

Bedaquiline (BDQ) is a novel and highly potent last-line antituberculosis drug that was approved by the US FDA in 2013. Owing to its stereo-structural complexity, chemical synthesis and compound optimization are rather difficult and expensive. This study describes the structural simplification of bedaquiline while preserving antitubercular activity. The compound's structure was split into fragments and reassembled in various combinations while replacing the two chiral carbon atoms with an achiral linkage instead. Four series of analogues were designed; these candidates retained their potent antitubercular activity at sub-microgram per mL concentrations against both sensitive and multidrug-resistant (MDR) Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains. Six out of the top nine MIC-ranked candidates were found to inhibit mycobacterial ATP synthesis activity with IC50 values between 20 and 40 μm, one had IC50>66 μm, and two showed no inhibition, despite their antitubercular activity. These results provide a basis for the development of chemically less complex, lower-cost bedaquiline derivatives and describe the identification of two derivatives with antitubercular activity against non-ATP synthase related targets

Gabriel Triangulations and Angle-Monotone Graphs: Local Routing and Recognition

A geometric graph is angle-monotone if every pair of vertices has a path between them that---after some rotation---is $x$- and $y$-monotone. Angle-monotone graphs are $\sqrt 2$-spanners and they are increasing-chord graphs. Dehkordi, Frati, and Gudmundsson introduced angle-monotone graphs in 2014 and proved that Gabriel triangulations are angle-monotone graphs. We give a polynomial time algorithm to recognize angle-monotone geometric graphs. We prove that every point set has a plane geometric graph that is generalized angle-monotone---specifically, we prove that the half-$\theta_6$-graph is generalized angle-monotone. We give a local routing algorithm for Gabriel triangulations that finds a path from any vertex $s$ to any vertex $t$ whose length is within $1 + \sqrt 2$ times the Euclidean distance from $s$ to $t$. Finally, we prove some lower bounds and limits on local routing algorithms on Gabriel triangulations.Comment: Appears in the Proceedings of the 24th International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization (GD 2016

Deep Impression: Audiovisual Deep Residual Networks for Multimodal Apparent Personality Trait Recognition

Here, we develop an audiovisual deep residual network for multimodal apparent personality trait recognition. The network is trained end-to-end for predicting the Big Five personality traits of people from their videos. That is, the network does not require any feature engineering or visual analysis such as face detection, face landmark alignment or facial expression recognition. Recently, the network won the third place in the ChaLearn First Impressions Challenge with a test accuracy of 0.9109

Unique pattern of infections in chronic granulomatous disease – The Asian experience

Conference Theme: Inflammatory Basis of Perinatal and Childhood DiseasesSymposium 40: InfectionBackground: Chronic granulomatous disease (CGD) is a phagocytic disorder caused by defective NADPH oxidase activity. Affected individuals are susceptible to bacterial infections, mycosis and hyperinflammatory complications. Variations in the epidemiology of infectious diseases across geographical regions can lead to distinct clinical phenotypes. Objective: To identify the unique clinical characteristics of a large cohort of CGD patients in China and Southeast Asia referred for genetic studies from 2003 to 2012. Methods: 53 patients with genetically-confirmed CGD were included and their clinical features were analyzed. CYBB and CYBA mutations were studied by Sanger sequencing, and NCF1 ‘GT’ deletion hotspot mutation was studied on genomic DNA by GeneScan. Results: 44 patients with X-CGD had CYBB mutations (missense[n=16]; nonsense[n=8]; deletion[n=9]; insertion[n=2]; intron mutation[n=9]). Nine patient had AR-CGD (CYBA[n=5]; NCF1 75_76delGT[n=4]). The median age at presentation and diagnosis was higher in AR-CGD (7m and 66m) compared with X-CGD (3m and 22m). The commonest presentations were pneumonia (58%), skin and perianal abscess (49%), lymphadenitis (42%) and recurrent diarrhea (30%). Aspergillosis and salmonellosis occurred at a frequency similar to published studies (13% and 19% respectively), but the commonest infection was BCG (43%) and 11% had disseminated BCG. 21% of patients had tuberculosis. Fulminant melioidosis and Chromobacterium violaceum infections occurred in 3 patients and two of their male siblings. Hyperinflammatory conditions included polyarthritis (n=3) and pulmonary granuloma (n=2). Death was recorded in 8 patients (15%). Conclusion: Melioidosis and C. violaceum indigenous to Southeast Asia can cause life-threatening infections in CGD patients. The high incidence of mycobacterial infections is associated with universal BCG vaccination and endemicity of tuberculosis. Such observations emphasize the role of respiratory burst as an immune defense mechanism against these pathogens. These infections are seldom reported in Caucasian cohorts, illustrating the importance of regional collaborative studies to facilitate pattern recognition and early diagnosis of primary immunodeficiencies.published_or_final_versio

In vitro adhesion of oral Candida species to denture materials

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Measurement of the Branching Fraction of J/psi --> pi+ pi- pi0

Using 58 million J/psi and 14 million psi' decays obtained by the BESII experiment, the branching fraction of J/psi --> pi+ pi- pi0 is determined. The result is (2.10+/-0.12)X10^{-2}, which is significantly higher than previous measurements.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, RevTex

First observation of psi(2S)-->K_S K_L

The decay psi(2S)-->K_S K_L is observed for the first time using psi(2S) data collected with the Beijing Spectrometer (BESII) at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider (BEPC); the branching ratio is determined to be B(psi(2S)-->K_S K_L) = (5.24\pm 0.47 \pm 0.48)\times 10^{-5}. Compared with J/psi-->K_S K_L, the psi(2S) branching ratio is enhanced relative to the prediction of the perturbative QCD ``12%'' rule. The result, together with the branching ratios of psi(2S) decays to other pseudoscalar meson pairs (\pi^+\pi^- and K^+K^-), is used to investigate the relative phase between the three-gluon and the one-photon annihilation amplitudes of psi(2S) decays.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Mapping species distributions: A comparison of skilled naturalist and lay citizen science recording

To assess the ability of traditional biological recording schemes and lay citizen science approaches to gather data on species distributions and changes therein, we examined bumblebee records from the UK’s national repository (National Biodiversity Network) and from BeeWatch. The two recording approaches revealed similar relative abundances of bumblebee species but different geographical distributions. For the widespread common carder (Bombus pascuorum), traditional recording scheme data were patchy, both spatially and temporally, reflecting active record centre rather than species distribution. Lay citizen science records displayed more extensive geographic coverage, reflecting human population density, thus offering better opportunities to account for recording effort. For the rapidly spreading tree bumblebee (Bombus hypnorum), both recording approaches revealed similar distributions due to a dedicated mapping project which overcame the patchy nature of naturalist records. We recommend, where possible, complementing skilled naturalist recording with lay citizen science programmes to obtain a nation-wide capability, and stress the need for timely uploading of data to the national repository