Metabolism and pharmacokinetics of paeoniflorin, a bioactive component from Peony roots

Paeoniflorin (PF, yield up to 5.8% of the dry weight) is the major and the most important component of peony roots. Recent studies demonstrate that PF improves the spatial and memory deficits in rodents and suggest possible utilization of this agent in the treatment of certain types of dementia. The understanding of the metabolism and pharmacokinetics of this agent may provide insights into the mechanism of its effects. Due to the poor absorption from intestine, PF is subjected to the metabolism to give three metabolites, by intestinal bacteria. Paeonimetabolin I (PM-I), the major intestinal bacterial metabolite of PF showed anticonvulsant action. And in the presence of thiol compounds, intestinal bacteria were found capable of transforming PF to more potent anticonvulsant thiopaeonimetabolin-I derivatives. The pharmacokinetics of PF and PM-I were investigated in rats by enzyme immunoassay (EIA), and were dose-dependent. PM-I was not detected in the rat plasma after intravenous (i.v.) administration of PF, and a significant difference in the plasma concentration of PM-I was observed between germ-free and conventional rats. After oral and i.v. administration of PM-I to rats, it was found at high concentrations in the plasmaこの論文は国立情報学研究所の学術雑誌公開支援事業により電子化されまし

Human intestinal bacteria responsible for the metabolism of saikosaponins

Metabolism of saikosaponins by human intestinal bacteria is discussed in view of the results obtained during the last years. Saikosaponins (SAPs) were converted to prosaikogenins and saikogenins in order by a human fecal suspension and by the bacterial strains, Eubacterium sp. A-44, Bifidobacterium sp. Saiko-1 and Saiko-2, isolated from human feces. From E. sp. A-44, two glycosidases responsible for the stepwise hydrolysis of SAPs were isolated and characterized as saikosaponin-hydrolyzing β-D-glucosidase and prosaikogenin-hydrolyzing β-D-fucosidase. After the oral administration of saikosaponin b_1 (Sb_1) to germ-free rats, no metabolites were detected in their plasma, cecal contents and cumulative feces. However, considerable amounts of prosaikogenin A and saikogenin A were detected when Sb_1 was orally given to conventional or the E. sp. A-44-infected gnotobiote rats. Fecal and cecal activities of hydrolyzing saikosaponins were found in the gnotobiote and conventional rats. These findings provided direct evidence that saikosaponins-hydrolyzing bacteria are necessary for the appearance of their biologically active metabolites in the systemic circulation

A Periodicity Metric for Assessing Maintenance Strategies

Organised by: Cranfield UniversityThe maintenance policy in manufacturing systems is devised to reset the machines functionality in an economical fashion in order to keep the products quality within acceptable levels. Therefore, there is a need for a metric to evaluate and quantify function resetting due to the adopted maintenance policy. A novel metric for measuring the functional periodicity has been developed using the complexity theory. It is based on the rate and extent of function resetting. It can be used as an important criterion for comparing the different maintenance policy alternatives. An industrial example is used to illustrate the application of the new metric.Mori Seiki – The Machine Tool Company; BAE Systems; S4T – Support Service Solutions: Strategy and Transitio

Maintenance Strategies Design and Assessment Using a Periodic Complexity Approach

People become more dependent on various devices, which do deteriorate over time and their operation becomes more complex. This leads to higher unexpected failure chance, which causes inconvenience, cost, time, and even lives. Therefore, an efficient maintenance strategy that reduces complexity should be established to ensure the system performs economically as designed without interruption. In the current research, a comprehensive novel approach is developed for designing and evaluating maintenance strategies that effectively reduce complexity in a cost efficient way with maximum availability and quality. A proper maintenance strategy application needs a rigorous failure definition. A new complexity based mathematical definition of failure is introduced that is able to model all failure types. A complexity-based metric, complication rate , is introduced to measure functionality degradation and gradual failure. Maintenance reduces the system complexity by system resetting via introducing periodicity. A metric for measuring the amount of periodicity introduced by maintenance strategy is developed. Developing efficient maintenance strategies that improve system performance criteria, requires developing the mathematical relationships between maintenance and quality, availability, and cost. The first relation relating the product quality to maintenance policy is developed using the virtual age concept. The aging intensity function is then deployed to develop the relation between maintenance and availability. The relation between maintenance and cost is formulated by investigating the maintenance effect on each cost element. The final step in maintenance policy design is finding the optimum periodicity level. Two approaches are investigated; weighted sum integrated with AHP and a comfort zones approach. Comfort zones is a new developed physical programming based optimization heuristic that captures designer preferences and limitations without substantial efforts in tweaking or calculating weights. A mining truck case study is presented to explain the application of the developed maintenance design approach and compare its results to the traditional reward renewal theory. It is shown that the developed approach is more capable of designing a maintenance policy that reduces complexity and simultaneously improves some other performance measures. This research explains that considering complexity reduction in maintenance policy design improves system functionality, and it can be achieved by simple industrially applicable approach

Research Center for Ethnomedicines

I. 伝統薬物に関するデータベース（ETHMEDmmm）の構築和漢薬・アーユルヴェーダ薬物データベースを新たに開発し，学術データの構築を開始した。Il. 伝統薬物の薬効の評価と解析に関する研究1 ）難治性の神経疾患に対する有効性の検討とそれらの薬理作用の機序に関する研究インド生薬Ash wagandha から，ラット大脳皮質神経の初代培養細胞における神経突起伸展とシナプス形成作用を促進する成分を明らかにし，アルツハイマー病原因物質のアミロイドβ により障害を受けた神経細胞においても，それら成分によって軸索や樹状突起が再伸展することを見出した。また神経突起伸展に対する活性成分として人参類生薬から同定されたprotopanaxadiol 系のサポニンが，アルツハイマーモデル動物の記憶障害やシナプス脱落を改善することを明らかにした。Ⅲ. 生薬の品質評価に関する研究1 ）遺伝子解析による生薬の同定法開発に関する研究18S rRNA 遺伝子及びtrnK 遺伝子の塩基配列に基づく同定法として， Curcumα 属植物及び欝金類生薬についてはSNPs 解析法，人参類生薬についてはMultiple Amplification-refractory Mutation System 法を確立した。2 ）生薬の基源と品質に関する研究大黄の成分組成パターンは， mαtK 遺伝子の多型に基づいた薬用Rheum 属植物の分類と関連性があることを明らかにした。穆金類生薬5 種及びそれぞれの主成分の血管弛緩作用を明らかにした。日本産ガジュツ(C.zedoαriα）の熱水抽出エキスのみNO依存性の弛緩作用も認められ，これは多糖類に起因するものであった。IV. 世界の伝統医薬学の調査研究漢薬の資源をアジアに探る研究の一環として，モンゴル国のウランパートル～西部一帯で、Astrαgalus属，Ephedra属， Glycyrrhizα属植物などの植生調査を行った。この論文は国立情報学研究所の学術雑誌公開支援事業により電子化されまし

COMPUTER AIDED SYSTEM FOR BREAST CANCER DIAGNOSIS USING CURVELET TRANSFORM

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death among women worldwide. Early detection is the key for improving breast cancer prognosis. Digital mammography remains one of the most suitable tools for early detection of breast cancer. Hence, there are strong needs for the development of computer aided diagnosis (CAD) systems which have the capability to help radiologists in decision making. The main goal is to increase the diagnostic accuracy rate. In this thesis we developed a computer aided system for the diagnosis and detection of breast cancer using curvelet transform. Curvelet is a multiscale transform which possess directionality and anisotropy, and it breaks some inherent limitations of wavelet in representing edges in images. We started this study by developing a diagnosis system. Five feature extraction methods were developed with curvelet and wavelet coefficients to differentiate between different breast cancer classes. The results with curvelet and wavelet were compared. The experimental results show a high performance of the proposed methods and classification accuracy rate achieved 97.30%. The thesis then provides an automatic system for breast cancer detection. An automatic thresholding algorithm was used to separate the area composed of the breast and the pectoral muscle from the background of the image. Subsequently, a region growing algorithm was used to locate the pectoral muscle and suppress it from the breast. Then, the work concentrates on the segmentation of region of interest (ROI). Two methods are suggested to accomplish the segmentation stage: an adaptive thresholding method and a pattern matching method. Once the ROI has been identified, an automatic cropping is performed to extract it from the original mammogram. Subsequently, the suggested feature extraction methods were applied to the segmented ROIs. Finally, the K-Nearest Neighbor (KNN) and Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers were used to determine whether the region is abnormal or normal. At this level, the study focuses on two abnormality types (mammographic masses and architectural distortion). Experimental results show that the introduced methods have very high detection accuracies. The effectiveness of the proposed methods has been tested with Mammographic Image Analysis Society (MIAS) dataset. Throughout the thesis all proposed methods and algorithms have been applied with both curvelet and wavelet for comparison and statistical tests were also performed. The overall results show that curvelet transform performs better than wavelet and the difference is statistically significant

Influence of Different Heat Units and Supplementary Irrigation on Barley Production Under Matruh Conditions-Egypt

This study was carried out at Marsa Matruh governorate - western north coast Egypt (31° 15´ 35ʺ N, 27° 9´ 43ʺ E) in the 2017/2018 growing season. The experiment was conducted to assess the different heat units or Accumulative of growing degree-days (AGDD) under various factors [sowing dates, tillage operation and different Supplementary irrigation strategies] on biomass and grain yield production for barley. Thus; the factor of sowing date comprise into three treatments (15th Nov, 30th Nov and 15th Dec). Second factor is tillage with two treatments (no tillage”NT” and tillage 20cm”T”) and the third factor is Supplementary irrigation with three treatments (0, 70and 140mm). thus; The results revealed that the (1 Ton.Fed-1) for (BY)  needs for (585.3, 578.73 and 626.64) heat units (AGDD) as an average under different sowing dates (15th Nov, 30th Nov and 15th Dec.) respectively with tillage treatment “T” . Further; the (1 Ton.Fed-1) from grain yield (GY) needs for (1518) heat units if sowing on the (15th Nov.), for (1531.85) heat units on (30th Nov.) and for (1468.7) heat units on (15th Dec.). on the hand; with no tillage (NT)  the BY and GY need for more heat unit to get (1 Ton.Fed-1) by (683.7,729.7 and 807.6) heat units for BY and (1845.1,1904.1 and 2099.5) heat units for GY under different sowing date (15th Nov, 30th Nov and 15th Dec). Notable; that the highest value for heat uses efficiency (HUE)  observed with (140mm) and tillage operation (T)  under sowing date 15th Nov by (2.06 & 0.76 Kg. fed -1 C-1day-1) for both (BY) and (GY) respectively. However; under sowing date 30th Nov there is not any significant differentiation for heat uses efficiency (HUE) value compare with sowing date 15th Nov which recorded (2.03 & 0.73 Kg. fed -1 C-1day-1) for both (BY) and (GY) respectively. On the other hand; The Aqua Crop model adequately simulated the biomass yield (BY), and grain yield (GY) for barely under different treatments. The simulated (BY) agreed well with the measured (BY) across different treatments where (R2= 0.98 & E = 0.95 & RMSE = 1.17%) for barely under different treatments of (sowing dates and supplementary irrigation strategies) with tillage process. measured and simulated (GY) were also closely related. The Aqua Crop model calibrated the GY with the prediction statistics error by (R2= 0.90 & E = 0.51 & RMSE = 1.18%) with tillage process. Consequently; these results suggest that the good value recorded with tillage (T), (140mm) and 15th Nov. In addition, AquaCrop model could be used to predict BY and GY of barely with a high degree of reliability at western north coast conditions. Thus; using Aqua Crop helps to determine the plantation day which records a highest efficiency for heat units and water productivity. Keywords:  Aqua Crop; Barley production; Heat unit; Sowing date; Supplementary irrigation and Tillage DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/9-14-04 Publication date:July 31st 201

Research Center for Ethnomedicines

I.伝統薬物に関するデータベース(ETHMEDmmm)の構築民族薬物資料館に保有される約4,000点の生薬標本のデータを整理構築した。その内, 約50種類の生薬の学術情報, 約1,000点の標本に関するデータをインターネット上に公開した。II.伝統薬物の薬効の評価と解析に関する研究1)難治性の神経疾患に対する有効性の検討とそれらの薬理作用の機序に関する研究インド生薬Ashwagandhaから, ラット大脳皮質神経の初代培養細胞における神経突起伸展とシナプス形成作用を促進する成分を明らかにした。また人参類生薬のヒト神経モデル細胞に対する神経突起伸展作用を検討し, 野三七メタノールエキスから, 活性成分として4種のprotopanaxadio1系のサポニンを同定した。2)抗そう痒作用を有する伝統薬物の研究蛇床子メタノールエキスが, マウスにおけるサブスタンスP誘発の痒み行動を抑制することを明らかにし, エキスの分画により, 痒み行動を強く抑制する画分を得た。現在, 活性成分を同定中である。皿.生薬の品質評価に関する研究1)遺伝子解析による生薬の同定法開発に関する研究欝金・義朮類生薬の簡便な同定法として, 18SrRNA遺伝子及びtrnK遺伝子の塩基配列に基づくAmplification Refractory Mutation System法を確立した。また, 人参類の同定にTaqMan Assay法によるSNPs解析法を検討した。Rheum属植物並びに大黄についてmatK遺伝子領域の解析を行い, 塩基配列は種及び産地に特異的であることを明らかにした。2)生薬の基源と品質に関する研究雲南省産野三七からmajonoside R2を主成分とする30種のdammarane系サポニンを単離同定した。本種は分子系統学的にも成分化学的にもPanax vietnamensisに近縁であった。IV.世界の伝統医薬学の調査研究中国の広西壮族自治区, 広東省及び浙江省とタイ国で, 鬱金・莪朮類生薬並びにCurcuma属植物の市場と栽培(野生)地の調査を行った。モンゴル国のバヤンホンゴル県等で甘草, 麻黄, 及びモンゴル生薬の植生調査を行った。この論文は国立情報学研究所の学術雑誌公開支援事業により電子化されまし