Mechanism of Salutary Effects of Astringinin on Rodent Hepatic Injury following Trauma-Hemorrhage: Akt-Dependent Hemeoxygenase-1 Signaling Pathways

Astringinin can attenuate organ injury following trauma-hemorrhage, the mechanism remains unknown. Protein kinase B/hemeoxygenase-1 (Akt/HO-1) pathway exerts potent anti-inflammatory effects in various tissues. The aim of this study is to elucidate whether Akt/HO-1 plays any role in astringinin-mediated attenuation of hepatic injury following trauma-hemorrhage. For study this, male Sprague-Dawley rats underwent trauma-hemorrhage (mean blood pressure 35–40 mmHg for 90 min) followed by fluid resuscitation. A single dose of astringinin (0.3 mg/kg body weight) with or without a PI3K inhibitor (wortmannin) or a HO antagonist (chromium-mesoporphyrin) was administered during resuscitation. Various parameters were measured at 24 h post-resuscitation. Results showed that trauma-hemorrhage increased plasma aspartate and alanine aminotransferases (AST and ALT) concentrations and hepatic myeloperoxidase activity, cytokine induced neutrophil chemoattractant (CINC)-1, CINC-3, intercellular adhesion molecule-1, and interleukin-6 levels. These parameters were significantly improved in the astringinin-treated rats subjected to trauma-hemorrhage. Astringinin treatment also increased hepatic Akt activation and HO-1 expression as compared with vehicle-treated trauma-hemorrhaged rats. Co-administration of wortmannin or chromium-mesoporphyrin abolished the astringinin-induced beneficial effects on post-resuscitation pro-inflammatory responses and hepatic injury. These findings collectively suggest that the salutary effects of astringinin administration on attenuation of hepatic injury after trauma-hemorrhage are likely mediated via Akt dependent HO-1 up-regulation

Prenatal Tobacco Exposure Shortens Telomere Length in Children

Introduction: Preliminary evidence suggests a possible association between prenatal tobacco exposure and telomere length in children. This study was conducted to investigate whether maternal smoking during pregnancy was associated with telomere shortening in their children and whether prenatal and childhood exposure to environmental tobacco had any impact on this association. Methods: This is a population-representative study on the association between prenatal tobacco exposure and telomere length in children. Ninety-eight Hong Kong Chinese children aged under 15 years with prenatal tobacco exposure and 98 age- and gender-matched controls were recruited from a population health study with stratified random sampling. Results: Telomere length in children with prenatal tobacco exposure was significantly shorter than in those with no exposure (mean T/S ratio = 24.9 [SD = 8.58] in exposed vs. 28.97 [14.15] in control groups; P = 0.02). A negative dose-response relationship was observed between the T/S ratio and tobacco exposure duration: the longer the duration of maternal smoking in pregnancy, the shorter the child's telomere length. The association between the child's telomere length and prenatal tobacco exposure remained significant after considering the influence of family socioeconomic status and exposure to environmental tobacco smoke during pregnancy and childhood. Conclusions: Prenatal tobacco exposure was associated with telomere shortening in children. As this may impose significant health impacts through fetal genetic programming, more efforts should be made to reduce fetal tobacco exposure by educating pregnant women to not smoke and motivating smokers to quit in early pregnancy. Implications: As reflected by telomere shortening, prenatal tobacco exposure in children can cause premature aging and increased health risks, which we suggest is entirely preventable. Not smoking during pregnancy or quitting smoking is critical to improving the health outcome of our future generations as prenatal tobacco exposure may affect children's biological programming. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco. All rights reserved.postprin

「回首．動情．傳承」長者生命故事計劃

嶺南大學亞太老年學研究中心獲華人永遠墳場管理委員會（「華永會」）資助為期一年的「回首．動情．傳承」長者生命故事計劃(「計劃」)。此計劃旨在讓青年人認識長者生命經驗，學習克服困難與挫折以提升抗逆力，建立正向人生觀。 近年，主流媒體經常批評年輕人的負面人生觀，例如：「躺平主義」、「享樂主義」、「犬儒心態」等，亦不時看到青年人輕生的新聞。我們曾在大學內處理過不少受情緒困擾及企圖自殺的個案，與學生深入交流後，發現他們面對着沉重的學業壓力、財政困難或複雜的家庭關係，內心充滿掙扎不安。 此計劃讓嶺大學生與長者導師進行深度的對談，透過了解長者走過的路、他們經歷過的挫折和教訓，給予年輕人生命的啟示。如果我們以旅遊比喻人生，長者就像環遊世界的資深背包客，即使大家遊覽不同的地點、觀賞過不同的風景，他們總能夠分享一些旅遊的心得，讓新手遊客走少一點冤枉路，或領悟到旅遊的樂趣和意義。長者亦可以藉由敍述人生片段回顧他們生命中的故事，學習接納過去，增加自我認同感。青年人創作生命教育書冊，將長者積極的人生觀傳給年輕一代，並藉此鼓勵其他長者豁達地度過餘年。 我們於2022年初招募嶺南大學學生接受「生命故事敍述」培訓，內容包括：本港的人口老化現象、敍述治療理論、與長者溝通的技巧及模擬實踐練習等，以裝備同學的知識和技巧。本中心再向屯門、元朗區的長者機構發邀請信，誠邀長者擔任生命導師接受訪問。 嶺大安排同學以兩人一組的小隊形式，於2022年6至7月期間前往長者中心、日間護理中心、嶺南大學或長者家中，與十二位長者進行深入訪談。訪談結束後，同學根據訪談的內容，為長者書寫他們獨特的生命故事。例如在人離鄉賤的異國環境下，努力打拼事業的Alfred；堅持不懈持續進修的淑芹和馮春林；即使沒機會求學，仍憑一雙巧手闖出一片天的譚惠；在文化大革命的漩渦中，憑着熱忱而改變命運的蘭英；還有為家人無私奉獻的鳳群、歐婆婆、雅芳及細女；離鄉別井勇闖異地的阿美和阿水；即使被家人賣去做「妹仔」，仍能以「阿Q精神」面對的諒餘。 為保障長者的私隱權益，本書內所有刊登之故事皆經過受訪者或社工審閱，部份受訪者選擇以化名的形式來分享自己的故事，我們亦移除了部份敏感的個人資料。https://commons.ln.edu.hk/apias_guide/1008/thumbnail.jp

Regulation of gene expression in ovarian cancer cells by luteinizing hormone receptor expression and activation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since a substantial percentage of ovarian cancers express gonadotropin receptors and are responsive to the relatively high concentrations of pituitary gonadotropins during the postmenopausal years, it has been suggested that receptor activation may contribute to the etiology and/or progression of the neoplasm. The goal of the present study was to develop a cell model to determine the impact of luteinizing hormone (LH) receptor (LHR) expression and LH-mediated LHR activation on gene expression and thus obtain insights into the mechanism of gonadotropin action on ovarian surface epithelial (OSE) carcinoma cells.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The human ovarian cancer cell line, SKOV-3, was stably transfected to express functional LHR and incubated with LH for various periods of time (0-20 hours). Transcriptomic profiling was performed on these cells to identify LHR expression/activation-dependent changes in gene expression levels and pathways by microarray and qRT-PCR analyses.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Through comparative analysis on the LHR-transfected SKOV-3 cells exposed to LH, we observed the differential expression of 1,783 genes in response to LH treatment, among which five significant families were enriched, including those of growth factors, translation regulators, transporters, G-protein coupled receptors, and ligand-dependent nuclear receptors. The most highly induced early and intermediate responses were found to occupy a network impacting transcriptional regulation, cell growth, apoptosis, and multiple signaling transductions, giving indications of LH-induced apoptosis and cell growth inhibition through the significant changes in, for example, tumor necrosis factor, Jun and many others, supportive of the observed cell growth reduction in <it>in vitro </it>assays. However, other observations, e.g. the substantial up-regulation of the genes encoding the endothelin-1 subtype A receptor, stromal cell-derived factor 1, and insulin-like growth factor II, all of which are potential therapeutic targets, may reflect a positive mediation of ovarian cancer growth.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Overall, the present study elucidates the extensive transcriptomic changes of ovarian cancer cells in response to LH receptor activation, which provides a comprehensive and objective assessment for determining new cancer therapies and potential serum markers, of which over 100 are suggested.</p

The Physics of the B Factories

This work is on the Physics of the B Factories. Part A of this book contains a brief description of the SLAC and KEK B Factories as well as their detectors, BaBar and Belle, and data taking related issues. Part B discusses tools and methods used by the experiments in order to obtain results. The results themselves can be found in Part C

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Search for new particles in events with energetic jets and large missing transverse momentum in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A search is presented for new particles produced at the LHC in proton-proton collisions at root s = 13 TeV, using events with energetic jets and large missing transverse momentum. The analysis is based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 101 fb(-1), collected in 2017-2018 with the CMS detector. Machine learning techniques are used to define separate categories for events with narrow jets from initial-state radiation and events with large-radius jets consistent with a hadronic decay of a W or Z boson. A statistical combination is made with an earlier search based on a data sample of 36 fb(-1), collected in 2016. No significant excess of events is observed with respect to the standard model background expectation determined from control samples in data. The results are interpreted in terms of limits on the branching fraction of an invisible decay of the Higgs boson, as well as constraints on simplified models of dark matter, on first-generation scalar leptoquarks decaying to quarks and neutrinos, and on models with large extra dimensions. Several of the new limits, specifically for spin-1 dark matter mediators, pseudoscalar mediators, colored mediators, and leptoquarks, are the most restrictive to date.Peer reviewe

Combined searches for the production of supersymmetric top quark partners in proton-proton collisions at root s=13 TeV

A combination of searches for top squark pair production using proton-proton collision data at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV at the CERN LHC, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 137 fb(-1) collected by the CMS experiment, is presented. Signatures with at least 2 jets and large missing transverse momentum are categorized into events with 0, 1, or 2 leptons. New results for regions of parameter space where the kinematical properties of top squark pair production and top quark pair production are very similar are presented. Depending on themodel, the combined result excludes a top squarkmass up to 1325 GeV for amassless neutralino, and a neutralinomass up to 700 GeV for a top squarkmass of 1150 GeV. Top squarks with masses from 145 to 295 GeV, for neutralino masses from 0 to 100 GeV, with a mass difference between the top squark and the neutralino in a window of 30 GeV around the mass of the top quark, are excluded for the first time with CMS data. The results of theses searches are also interpreted in an alternative signal model of dark matter production via a spin-0 mediator in association with a top quark pair. Upper limits are set on the cross section for mediator particle masses of up to 420 GeV

Measurement of the top quark forward-backward production asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric and chromomagnetic moments in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV

Abstract The parton-level top quark (t) forward-backward asymmetry and the anomalous chromoelectric (d̂ t) and chromomagnetic (μ̂ t) moments have been measured using LHC pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, collected in the CMS detector in a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 35.9 fb−1. The linearized variable AFB(1) is used to approximate the asymmetry. Candidate t t ¯ events decaying to a muon or electron and jets in final states with low and high Lorentz boosts are selected and reconstructed using a fit of the kinematic distributions of the decay products to those expected for t t ¯ final states. The values found for the parameters are AFB(1)=0.048−0.087+0.095(stat)−0.029+0.020(syst),μ̂t=−0.024−0.009+0.013(stat)−0.011+0.016(syst), and a limit is placed on the magnitude of | d̂ t| &lt; 0.03 at 95% confidence level. [Figure not available: see fulltext.

Probing effective field theory operators in the associated production of top quarks with a Z boson in multilepton final states at root s=13 TeV

Peer reviewe