Phenylboronic acid-diol crosslinked 6-<i>O</i>-vinylazeloyl-d-galactose nanocarriers for insulin delivery

A new block polymer named poly 3-acrylamidophenylboronic acid-b-6-O–vinylazeloyl-d-galactose (p(AAPBA-b-OVZG)) was prepared using 3-acrylamidophenylboronic acid (AAPBA) and 6-O-vinylazeloyl-D-galactose (OVZG) via a two-step procedure involving S-1-dodecyl-S-(α', α'-dimethyl-α″-acetic acid) trithiocarbonate (DDATC) as chain transfer agent, 2,2-azobisisobutyronitrile (AIBN) as initiator and dimethyl formamide (DMF) as solvent. The structures of the polymer were examined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and 1H NMR and the thermal stability was determined by thermal gravimetric analysis (TG/DTG). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) were utilized to evaluate the morphology and properties of the p(AAPBA-b-OVZG) nanoparticles. The cell toxicity, animal toxicity and therapeutic efficacy were also investigated. The results indicate the p(AAPBA-b-OVZG) was successfully synthesized and had excellent thermal stability. Moreover, the p(AAPBA-b-OVZG) nanoparticles were submicron in size and glucose-sensitive in phosphate-buffered saline (PBS). In addition, insulin as a model drug had a high encapsulation efficiency and loading capacity and the release of insulin was increased at higher glucose levels. Furthermore, the nanoparticles showed a low-toxicity in cell and animal studies and they were effective at decreasing blood glucose levels of mice over 96 h. These p(AAPBA-b-OVZG) nanoparticles show promise for applications in diabetes treatment using insulin or other hypoglycemic proteins

Fast, linked, and open – the future of taxonomic publishing for plants: launching the journal PhytoKeys

The paper describes the focus, scope and the rationale of PhytoKeys, a newly established, peer-reviewed, open-access journal in plant systematics. PhytoKeys is launched to respond to four main challenges of our time: (1) Appearance of electronic publications as amendments or even alternatives to paper publications; (2) Open Access (OA) as a new publishing model; (3) Linkage of electronic registers, indices and aggregators that summarize information on biological species through taxonomic names or their persistent identifiers (Globally Unique Identifiers or GUIDs; currently Life Science Identifiers or LSIDs); (4) Web 2.0 technologies that permit the semantic markup of, and semantic enhancements to, published biological texts. The journal will pursue cutting-edge technologies in publication and dissemination of biodiversity information while strictly following the requirements of the current International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN)

A study of the parity-odd nucleon-nucleon potential

We investigate the parity-violating nucleon-nucleon potential as obtained in chiral effective field theory. By using resonance saturation we compare the chiral potential to the more traditional one-meson exchange potential. In particular, we show how parameters appearing in the different approaches can be compared with each other and demonstrate that analyses of parity violation in proton-proton scattering within the different approaches are in good agreement. In the second part of this work, we extend the parity-violating potential to next-to-next-to-leading order. We show that generally it includes both one-pion- and two-pion-exchange corrections, but the former play no significant role. The two-pion-exchange corrections depend on five new low-energy constants which only become important if the leading-order weak pion-nucleon constant $h_\pi$ turns out to be very small.Comment: Published versio

English Publicity of Chinese Folk Songs—With the Tea Picking Dance as an Example

Chinese folk songs have unique inheritance and dissemination value. While actively developing the local dissemination of folk songs, we should constantly expand the transmission of Chinese folk songs overseas and enhance the international influence of Chinese folk song culture. Utilizing folk song micro-lesson to popularize the knowledge of Chinese folk songs, conducting surveys and analyzing the attitudes of international students from different countries towards four folk song micro-lesson videos, we have obtained over 30 valid survey data. The survey found that 96.77% of respondents believe that this series of micro-lesson plays a certain role in spreading Chinese folk songs, and the majority of the audience is interested in folk song micro-lesson and willing to share them. Micro-lessons of folk songs is one of the media for disseminating Chinese folk songs and folk song culture in the new era, providing a reference for the new approach to the external dissemination of Chinese culture

Distribution of Measuring Points and Piezoelectric Actuators in Flutter Suppression

AbstractSingle input/single output (SISO), single input/multi out put (SIMO) and multi input/multi out put (SIMO) control laws for active flutter suppression are designed and realized in wind tunnel tests. Reasonable agreement between analytical and tested results is achieved. Based on these results, the distribution of response measuring points and piezoelectric actuators is investigated

Treating Simple Tibia Fractures with Poly-DL-Lactic Acid Screw as a Locked Intramedullary Nail

Purpose: To investigate the curative effect of poly-DL-lactic acid (PDLLA) absorbable screw as a locked intramedullary nail for simple tibia fractures.Methods: In this study, 35 patients treated with the PDLLA screw were observed, and another 35 patients treated with a traditional locking intramedullary nail were treated as controls. Intraoperative blood loss, postoperative complications, fracture-healing time, and Johner-Wruh grade at the last followup time point of the two treatment groups were compared.Results: No patients experienced neurovascular injury during the operation, and no significant difference was observed in the operation and intraoperative blood loss of both two groups (p &gt; 0.05). Postoperative x-ray results showed that the counterpoint and alignment of the fractures were favorable and that no rotational displacement had occurred. The follow-up period for all patients was 6 - 24 months, with a mean of 15.6 ± 6.7 months. All patients treated with PDLLA screw were observed to have well-healed tibia fractures, while three patients in the traditional treatment group appeared to have undesirable fracture healing. No infection, breakage of the internal fixator, or rotational displacement was found in either of the two groups, and no significant difference was observed in complication incidence between the two groups (p &gt; 0.05). Additionally, Johner-Wruh grading showed no statistically significant difference between the two groups (p &gt; 0.05). Interestingly, the fracture-healing time of the PDLLA screw-treated patients was significantly shortened compared with that of traditional treatment patients (p &lt; 0.05).Conclusion: PDLLA screw, as a locked intramedullary nail, is a promising treatment for simple tibia fracture

Module networks revisited: computational assessment and prioritization of model predictions

The solution of high-dimensional inference and prediction problems in computational biology is almost always a compromise between mathematical theory and practical constraints such as limited computational resources. As time progresses, computational power increases but well-established inference methods often remain locked in their initial suboptimal solution. We revisit the approach of Segal et al. (2003) to infer regulatory modules and their condition-specific regulators from gene expression data. In contrast to their direct optimization-based solution we use a more representative centroid-like solution extracted from an ensemble of possible statistical models to explain the data. The ensemble method automatically selects a subset of most informative genes and builds a quantitatively better model for them. Genes which cluster together in the majority of models produce functionally more coherent modules. Regulators which are consistently assigned to a module are more often supported by literature, but a single model always contains many regulator assignments not supported by the ensemble. Reliably detecting condition-specific or combinatorial regulation is particularly hard in a single optimum but can be achieved using ensemble averaging.Comment: 8 pages REVTeX, 6 figure