Anti-inflammatory effects of Chinese medicinal herbs on cerebral ischemia

<p>Abstracts</p> <p>Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of anti-inflammation, including cellular immunity, inflammatory mediators, reactive oxygen species, nitric oxide and several transcriptional factors, in the treatment of cerebral ischemia. This article reviews the roles of Chinese medicinal herbs as well as their ingredients in the inflammatory cascade induced by cerebral ischemia. Chinese medicinal herbs exert neuroprotective effects on cerebral ischemia. The effects include inhibiting the activation of microglia, decreasing levels of adhesion molecules such as intracellular adhesion molecule-1, attenuating expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-1β and tumor necrosis factor-α, reducing inducible nitric oxide synthase and reactive oxygen species, and regulating transcription factors such as nuclear factor-κB.</p

Method for Repairing Process Models with Selection Structures Based on Token Replay

Enterprise information systems (EIS) play an important role in business process management. Process mining techniques that can mine a large number of event logs generated in EIS become a very hot topic. There always exist some deviations between a process model of EIS and event logs. Therefore, a process model needs to be repaired. For the process model with selection structures, the mining accuracy of the existing methods is reduced because of the additional self-loops and invisible transitions. In this paper, a method for repairing Logical-Petri-nets-based process models with selection structures is proposed. According to the relationship between the input and output places of a sub-model, the deviation position is determined by a token replay method. Then, some algorithms are designed to repair the process models based on logical Petri nets. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is illustrated by some experiments, and the proposed method has relatively high fitness and precision compared with its peers

Evaluation of the in vivo anti-inflammatory activity of a flavone glycoside from Cancrinia discoidea (Ledeb.) Poljak

The anti-inflammatory effect of selagin-7-O-(6″-O-Acetyl-)-β-D-glucoside, isolated from the medicinal herb Cancrinia discoidea (Ledeb.) Poljak, was evaluated for its anti-inflammatory activity in the carrageenin- and serotonin-induced rat paw oedema models of acute inflammation and the cotton pellet-induced granuloma rat model of chronic inflammation. Flavone glycoside at doses of 5, 10, or 20 mg/kg, the clinical anti-inflammatory indo-methacin at 10 mg/kg, or vehicle were administered orally before injection of the pro-inflammatory compound. The test compound showed significant anti-inflammatory activity against paw edema induced by carrageenin or serotonin, most notably at the highest test dose of 20 mg/kg. In the cotton pellet-induced granuloma model, the compound showed dose-dependent anti-inflammatory activity, with the highest effect at 20 mg/kg. In all three assays, the flavone glucoside compound was more active at 20 mg/kg than indomethacin at 10 mg/kg

An Evaluation of Mathematics Grounding Activity Teachers’ Efficacy

Preparing high-quality mathematics teachers to promote students’ meaningful learning has gained much attention in Taiwan, where the “Just Do Math (JDM)” Project was correspondently initiated in 2014.&nbsp; This study aimed to evaluate targeted mathematics grounding activity teachers’ (MGA-teachers) the efficacy ratings for clarifying the effectiveness of the JDM professional development (PD) programs.&nbsp; A two-year “mixed method approach” was employed: First, a qualitative task analysis of the MGA-teachers PD programs was conducted for both understanding how these PD programs were executed and constructing the MGA-teachers’ efficacy instrument for further quantitative investigations.&nbsp; Secondly, the “JDM MGA-Teacher Efficacy Instrument” was employed to examine the status and possible differences of targeted MGA-teachers’ efficacy.&nbsp; There were 408 MGA-teachers participated in this study, where the efficacy ratings of these teachers were examined by corresponding statistical analyses.&nbsp; The findings were reported in two parts: Based on the findings of the qualitative task analysis, certain differences practically existed where various teaching approaches were employed by different MGA-instructors associated with a variety of content were provided in every session of the “2-day PD activity”.&nbsp; Besides, according to the quantitative findings, it was found that the targeted MGA-teachers’ efficacy belief is averagely at an acceptable level (i.e. around 70%~75%).&nbsp; It was also found that the experience and willingness of attending MGA PD activities and hosting fun-math camps had a significant influence on the positive development of their efficacy belief.&nbsp; Finally, discussions of the findings and recommendations were proposed for future study and further improvements of the JDM PD programs

Topological Gauge Structure and Phase Diagram for Weakly Doped Antiferromagnets

We show that the topological gauge structure in the phase string theory of the {\rm t-J} model gives rise to a global phase diagram of antiferromagnetic (AF) and superconducting (SC) phases in a weakly doped regime. Dual confinement and deconfinement of holons and spinons play essential roles here, with a quantum critical point at a doping concentration $x_c\simeq 0.043$. The complex experimental phase diagram at low doping is well described within such a framework.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, modified version, to appear in Phys. Rev. Let