Endothelin-Receptor Antagonists beyond Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension: Cancer and Fibrosis.

The endothelin axis and in particular the two endothelin receptors, ETA and ETB, are targets for therapeutic intervention in human diseases. Endothelin-receptor antagonists are in clinical use to treat pulmonary arterial hypertension and have been under clinical investigation for the treatment of several other diseases, such as systemic hypertension, cancer, vasospasm, and fibrogenic diseases. In this Perspective, we review the molecules that have been evaluated in human clinical trials for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension, as well as other cardiovascular diseases, cancer, and fibrosis. We will also discuss the therapeutic consequences of receptor selectivity with regard to ETA-selective, ETB-selective, or dual ETA/ETB antagonists. We will also consider which chemical characteristics are relevant to clinical use and the properties of molecules necessary for efficacy in treating diseases against which known molecules displayed suboptimal efficacy

A combination of clustering-based under-sampling with ensemble methods for solving imbalanced class problem in intelligent systems

Nowadays, most real-world datasets suffer from the problem of imbalanced distribution of data samples in classes, especially when the number of data representing the larger class (majority) is much greater than that of the smaller class (minority). In order to solve this problem, various types of undersampling or oversampling techniques have been proposed to create a dataset with equal number of samples in each class by reducing or increasing the number of samples in majority or minority classes, respectively. Ensemble classifiers use multiple learning algorithms to enhance the accuracy of classification. Based on the results, combining undersampling or oversampling methods with ensemble classifiers can result in models with better performance. By using both clustering and new undersampling methods, the present study aimed to propose a novel clustering-based undersampling method to create a balanced dataset. This method uses k-means clustering algorithm for clustering the data, Mahalanobis distance to analyze samples distance in each cluster to centroid, and a selection method that preserves the pattern of data distribution in each cluster. Regarding the experimental results obtained by 44 benchmark datasets from KEEL repository, the proposed approach performed better than that of seven state-of-the-art approaches

Ultraviolet photolysis of HOCl: REMPI measurement of the relative population of chlorine atom (P-2) spin-orbit states

The nascent chlorine atom (P-2) relative spin-orbit state population resulting from UV photolysis of HOCl has been measured by resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) in single laser experiments. The ratio of (0.30 +/- 0.07) for Cl*:Cl has been obtained, indicating a stronger preference for production of ground-state Cl(P-2(3/2)) than expected from statistical weights. Also, the Cl+ arrival-time spectra show that most of the energy available in the photolysis is converted into kinetic energy of the photofragments

Ag/Pd core-shell nanoparticles by a successive method: Pulsed laser ablation of Ag in water and reduction reaction of PdCl2

In this study Ag/Pd nanoparticles (NPs) have been fabricated by a successive method; first, colloids of Ag nanoparticles (NPs) have been prepared in water by pulsed laser ablation in liquid (PLAL) method. Then PdCl2 solution (up to 0.2 g/l) were added to the as-prepared or aged colloidal Ag NPs. Characterizations were done using UV-vis spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and transmissions electron microscopy (TEM) techniques. Spectroscopy data showed that surface plasmon resonance (SPR) peaks of as-prepared Ag NPs at about lambda = 400nm were completely extinguished after addition of PdCl2 solution while this effect was not observed when aged Ag NPs are used. XRD and XPS results revealed that by addition of the PdCl2 solution into the as-prepared Ag NPs, metallic palladium, and silver chloride composition products are generated. TEM images revealed that as a result of this reaction, single and core-shell nanoparticles are obtained and their average sizes are 2.4 nm (Ag) and 3.2 nm (Ag/Pd). The calculated d-spacing values form XRD data with observations on high magnification TEM images were able to explain the chemical nature of different parts of Ag/Pd NPs. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved