A novel inorganic–organic hybrid borate, poly{[Na2(C4H2O4)(H3BO3)(H2O)4]·H3BO3}

The structure of the title compound, catena-poly[[[di-μ-aqua-μ-fumarato-μ-(boric acid)-disodium]-di-μ-aqua] boric acid monosolvate], contains two crystallographically independent Na+ cations, each being six-coordinated by one fumarate O atom, one boric acid O atom and four water O atoms in a distorted octa­hedral geometry. Adjacent [NaO2(OH2)4] units share edges and are linked into chains propagating parallel to [100]. The free boric acid mol­ecules are connected to the chains through strong inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds. Additional O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds between the water mol­ecules, the free and coordinated boric acid mol­ecules and the fumarate anion lead to the formation of a three-dimensional supra­molecular structure. With the exception of the two water mol­ecules, all other atoms lie on mirror planes

Bis[(m-phenyl­enedimethyl­ene)­diammonium] tetra­deca­borate

The title compound 2C8H14N2 2+·[B14O20(OH)6]4−, contains diprotonated C8H14N2 2+ cations and centrosymmetric tetra­deca­borate anions. The crystal structure is stabilized by O—H⋯O and N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

Examining resilience in local adaptation policies – pilot studies in Taipei and Tainan, Taiwan

Resilience has gained considerable attention over recent years in both theories and decision-making practices. In Taiwan, the term resilience is generally considered as a synonym for adaptation. This may limit the use of the notion. By understanding resilience in terms of adaptation and mitigation, we identify six attributes for assessment. The assessment is addressed in local level climate change adaptation policies in two selected cities. The city of Taipei represents places where local adaptation policies were directed mainly by the national government. The city of Tainan represents places where the municipal government plays a more critical role in framing these policies. This can result in different policymaking considerations. The assessment points out that the proposed actions of these policies are broader than a general understanding of adaptation. Mitigation strategies are addressed and sometimes highly recommended. Because of this, we can interpret these actions as resilience strategies covered under the use of the term adaptation. The notion of resilience does not stay on the rhetorical level alone. It is happening in shaping decisions – without using the terminology directly. The broadness of the resilience notion, in spite of being abstract, can provide a more general framework for cross-sectorial discussion and collaboration in policy-making. This is particularly important for dealing with complex issues, such as climate-related disturbances, which cannot be managed by a single group of professions

Human Papillomaviruses and Papillomatosis Lesions of the Female Lower Genital Tract

Objective: The objective of this study was to determine whether human papillomavirus (HPV) infections are involved in the development of papillomatosis lesions of the lower female genital tract

Cyclo­hexyldimethyl­ammonium tetra­hydroxy­penta­borate

The title compound, [C8H18N]+·[B5O6(OH)4]−, has been synthesized under mild solvothermal conditions in the presence of N,N-dimethyl­cyclo­hexyl­amine acting as a template. The structure consists of penta­borate [B5O6(OH)4]− anions connected through O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds into a three-dimensional framework, with large channels along [100], [010] and [001] directions. The [C8H18N]+ cations reside in the channels, inter­acting with the framework through N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

Revealing metabolite biomarkers for acupuncture treatment by linear programming based feature selection

BACKGROUND: Acupuncture has been practiced in China for thousands of years as part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and has gradually accepted in western countries as an alternative or complementary treatment. However, the underlying mechanism of acupuncture, especially whether there exists any difference between varies acupoints, remains largely unknown, which hinders its widespread use. RESULTS: In this study, we develop a novel Linear Programming based Feature Selection method (LPFS) to understand the mechanism of acupuncture effect, at molecular level, by revealing the metabolite biomarkers for acupuncture treatment. Specifically, we generate and investigate the high-throughput metabolic profiles of acupuncture treatment at several acupoints in human. To select the subsets of metabolites that best characterize the acupuncture effect for each meridian point, an optimization model is proposed to identify biomarkers from high-dimensional metabolic data from case and control samples. Importantly, we use nearest centroid as the prototype to simultaneously minimize the number of selected features and the leave-one-out cross validation error of classifier. We compared the performance of LPFS to several state-of-the-art methods, such as SVM recursive feature elimination (SVM-RFE) and sparse multinomial logistic regression approach (SMLR). We find that our LPFS method tends to reveal a small set of metabolites with small standard deviation and large shifts, which exactly serves our requirement for good biomarker. Biologically, several metabolite biomarkers for acupuncture treatment are revealed and serve as the candidates for further mechanism investigation. Also biomakers derived from five meridian points, Zusanli (ST36), Liangmen (ST21), Juliao (ST3), Yanglingquan (GB34), and Weizhong (BL40), are compared for their similarity and difference, which provide evidence for the specificity of acupoints. CONCLUSIONS: Our result demonstrates that metabolic profiling might be a promising method to investigate the molecular mechanism of acupuncture. Comparing with other existing methods, LPFS shows better performance to select a small set of key molecules. In addition, LPFS is a general methodology and can be applied to other high-dimensional data analysis, for example cancer genomics