Poly[diaqua­(μ2-oxalato-κ4 O 1,O 2:O 1′,O 2′)(μ2-pyrazine-2-carboxyl­ato-κ4 N 1,O:O,O′)neodymium(III)]

In the title complex, [Nd(C5H3N2O2)(C2O4)(H2O)2]n, the NdIII atom is ten-coordinated by one N atom and three O atoms from two pyrazine-2-carboxyl­ate ligands, four O atoms from two oxalate ligands and two water mol­ecules in a distorted bicapped square-anti­prismatic geometry. The two crystallographically independent oxalate ligands, each lying on an inversion center, act as bridging ligands, linking Nd atoms into an extended zigzag chain. Neighboring chains are linked by the pyrazine-2-carboxyl­ate ligands into a two-dimensional layerlike network in the (10) plane. The layers are further connected by O—H⋯O and O—H⋯N hydrogen bonds, forming a three-dimensional supra­molecular network

Dual-view Curricular Optimal Transport for Cross-lingual Cross-modal Retrieval

Current research on cross-modal retrieval is mostly English-oriented, as the availability of a large number of English-oriented human-labeled vision-language corpora. In order to break the limit of non-English labeled data, cross-lingual cross-modal retrieval (CCR) has attracted increasing attention. Most CCR methods construct pseudo-parallel vision-language corpora via Machine Translation (MT) to achieve cross-lingual transfer. However, the translated sentences from MT are generally imperfect in describing the corresponding visual contents. Improperly assuming the pseudo-parallel data are correctly correlated will make the networks overfit to the noisy correspondence. Therefore, we propose Dual-view Curricular Optimal Transport (DCOT) to learn with noisy correspondence in CCR. In particular, we quantify the confidence of the sample pair correlation with optimal transport theory from both the cross-lingual and cross-modal views, and design dual-view curriculum learning to dynamically model the transportation costs according to the learning stage of the two views. Extensive experiments are conducted on two multilingual image-text datasets and one video-text dataset, and the results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method. Besides, our proposed method also shows a good expansibility to cross-lingual image-text baselines and a decent generalization on out-of-domain data

Specific neuroprotective effects of manual stimulation of real acupoints versus non-acupoints in rats after middle cerebral artery occlusion

The objective of this study was to investigate the effectiveness and specific effects of acupuncture on ischemic-induced damage in rats after permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion. Cerebral ischemia was induced by middle cerebral artery occlusion in male Wistar rats. The rats were divided into the following 4 groups: normal controls, ischemic, real acupuncture-treated (Shuigou, DU26), and non-acupoint-treated groups. On the third postoperative day, neurological deficit scores, cerebral blood flow, infarction volume, and neuronal cell death counts were measured. In the real acupuncture-treated group, the neurological deficit scores and cerebral blood flow were improved (p < 0.05) and the infarction volume and neuronal cell death counts were reduced (p < 0.01) compared to the ischemic and non-acupoint-treated groups. The present study demonstrated that real acupuncture was effective against focal ischemia-induced damage in rats after middle cerebral artery occlusion, and the effects were specifically related to the right needling location.Key words: specificity, real acupoint, non-acupoint, middle cerebral artery occlusion, animal experimentatio

Salvianolic Acid B Prevents Arsenic Trioxide-Induced Cardiotoxicity In Vivo and Enhances Its Anticancer Activity In Vitro

Clinical attempts to reduce the cardiotoxicity of arsenic trioxide (ATO) without compromising its anticancer activities remain to be an unresolved issue. In this study, we determined whether Sal B can protect against ATO-induced cardiac toxicity in vivo and increase the toxicity of ATO toward cancer cells. Combination treatment of Sal B and ATO was investigated using BALB/c mice and human hepatoma (HepG2) cells and human cervical cancer (HeLa) cells. The results showed that the combination treatment significantly improved the ATO-induced loss of cardiac function, attenuated damage of cardiomyocytic structure, and suppressed the ATO-induced release of cardiac enzymes into serum in BALB/c mouse models. The expression levels of Bcl-2 and p-Akt in the mice treated with ATO alone were reduced, whereas those in the mice given the combination treatment were similar to those in the control mice. Moreover, the combination treatment significantly enhanced the ATO-induced cytotoxicity and apoptosis of HepG2 cells and HeLa cells. Increases in apoptotic marker cleaved poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase and decreases in procaspase-3 expressions were observed through western blot. Taken together, these observations indicate that the combination treatment of Sal B and ATO is potentially applicable for treating cancer with reduced cardiotoxic side effects

Poly[bis­(4,4′-bipyridine)(μ3-4,4′-dicarboxybiphenyl-3,3′-di­carboxyl­ato)iron(II)]

In the polymeric title complex, [Fe(C16H8O8)(C10H8N2)2]n, the iron(II) cation is coordinated by four O atoms from three different 4,4′-dicarboxybiphenyl-3,3′-di­carboxyl­ate ligands and two N atoms from two 4,4′-bipyridine ligands in a distorted octa­hedral geometry. The 4,4′-dicarboxybiphenyl-3,3′-di­carboxyl­ate ligands bridge adjacent cations, forming chains parallel to the c axis. The chains are further connected by inter­molecular O—H⋯N hydrogen bonds, forming two-dimensional supra­molecular layers parallel to (010)

Poly[(6-carboxy­picolinato-κ3 O 2,N,O 6)(μ3-pyridine-2,6-dicarboxyl­ato-κ5 O 2,N,O 6:O 2′:O 6′)dysprosium(III)]

In the title complex, [Dy(C7H3NO4)(C7H4NO4)]n, one of the ligands is fully deprotonated while the second has lost only one H atom. Each DyIII ion is coordinated by six O atoms and two N atoms from two pyridine-2,6-dicarboxyl­ate and two 6-carboxy­picolinate ligands, displaying a bicapped trigonal-prismatic geometry. The average Dy—O bond distance is 2.40 Å, some 0.1Å longer than the corresponding Ho—O distance in the isotypic holmium complex. Adjacent DyIII ions are linked by the pyridine-2,6-dicarboxyl­ate ligands, forming a layer in (100). These layers are further connected by π–π stacking inter­actions between neighboring pyridyl rings [centroid–centroid distance = 3.827 (3) Å] and C—H⋯O hydrogen-bonding inter­actions, assembling a three-dimensional supra­molecular network. Within each layer, there are other π–π stacking inter­actions between neighboring pyridyl rings [centroid–centroid distance = 3.501 (2) Å] and O—H⋯O and C—H⋯O hydrogen-bonding inter­actions, which further stabilize the structure

4-(4-Pyrid­yl)pyridinium 3′,4,4′-tricarboxy­biphenyl-3-carboxyl­ate dihydrate

In the title compound, C10H9N2 +·C16H9O8 −·2H2O, both the cation and anion possess crystallographically imposed centres of symmetry, causing the nitro­gen-bound H atom in the 4-(4-pyrid­yl)pyridinium cation and the acidic H atom of the carboxyl­ate groups at the 3 and 3′ positions in the anion to be disordered over two positions with equal occupancies. In the crystal packing, the cations, anions and water mol­ecules are connected by O—H⋯O, C—H⋯O and N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds, forming layers parallel to (20). These layer are further connected into a three-dimensional supra­molecular network by O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds involving the water mol­ecules as H-atom donors and by weak π–π stacking inter­actions between neighbouring benzene and pyridine rings, with centroid–centroid distances of 3.756 (5) Å