Cryptotanshinone Induces Apoptosis of HL-60 Cells via Mitochondrial Pathway

Purpose: To test the effect of Cryptotanshinone (CPT), a natural  compound isolated from the plant Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge, on human leukemic cell lines (HL-60).Methods: HL-60 cells were treated with CPT. Cell growth inhibition (%) was quantitated using MTT assay. Apoptosis detection with Annexin  V-FITC/propidium iodide staining was followed by flow cytometry. Caspase-3, caspase-8, and caspase-9 colorimetric assay kit was used to determine caspase protease activity. Loss of mitochondrial membrane potential was examined by flow cytometry with JC-1 staining. Bax, PARP, p53, p21 and cytochrome C were determined using Western blot.Results: Morphologic assessment, Annexin V-FITC/propidium iodide  staining results and sub-G1 percentage indicate that the cytotoxic effect of CPT was mediated by induction of apoptosis. Furthermore, increased Bax expression, decreased Bcl-2 expression, loss of mitochondria membranepotential (MMP), release of cytochrome C, activation of caspase enzyme, cleavage of PARP and accumulation of p53 and p21 were detected during the apoptotic process. Caspase inhibitor partially abrogated CPT-induced apoptosis.Conclusion: The results show that CPT induced apoptosis of HL-60 cell lines by mitochondria pathway, and suggest that CPT may serve as a potential therapy for leukemia.Keywords: Cryptotanshinone, Salvia miltiorrhiza Bunge, Caspase,  Membrane potential, Mitochondrial, Apoptosis, Leukemia, Cytochrome C, Cell cycl

Synthesis, Property Study and Modification of II-VI Sulfide Semiconductor Nanoparticles

Surface modification of semiconductor nanopartic1e material would not only improve the stability but also its performance. This study is devoted to new synthetic methods for preparation and modification of hydrophilic semiconductor CdS, CdSe nanoparticles resulting in a novel type of compounds-supramolecules, resembles of metal complexes and nanoparticles. A variety of spectroscopic methods were used to monitor the modification process and to investigate the optical properties of the supramolecules. Based on the consideration of the structure of nanopartic1es, a Lewis acid CuBM was chosen for the modification of S sites on the particle surface. XRD, TEM, UV-Vis, XPS, lH NMR, EPR, photoluminescence and time-resolved fluorescence were used to study the modification, and a structure was proposed based on the spectroscopic results. The modification was found to be light induced and reversible

BBF RFC 101: Logic Gene Module Standard

This Request for Comments (RFC) describes a new framework for standardize logic gene relations among gene circuits. Each type of logic module in gene circuit can be summarized in a standard device in electronics. In this paper, we collect several frequently-used logic modules and the corresponding classic gene structure

Optical pulse-shaping for internal cooling of molecules

We consider the use of pulse-shaped broadband femtosecond lasers to optically cool rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom of molecules. Since this approach relies on cooling rotational and vibrational quanta by exciting an electronic transition, it is most easily applicable to molecules with similar ground and excited potential energy surfaces, such that the vibrational state is usually unchanged during electronic relaxation. Compared with schemes that cool rotations by exciting vibrations, this approach achieves internal cooling on the orders-of- magnitude faster electronic decay timescale and is potentially applicable to apolar molecules. For AlH+, a candidate species, a rate-equation simulation indicates that rovibrational equilibrium should be achievable in 8 \mu s. In addition, we report laboratory demonstration of optical pulse shaping with sufficient resolution and power for rotational cooling of AlH+

Enhanced squeezing with parity kicks

Using exponential quadratic operators, we present a general framework for studying the exact dynamics of system-bath interaction in which the Hamiltonian is described by the quadratic form of bosonic operators. To demonstrate the versatility of the approach, we study how the environment affects the squeezing of quadrature components of the system. We further propose that the squeezing can be enhanced when parity kicks are applied to the system.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Cloud-based Automatic Speech Recognition Systems for Southeast Asian Languages

This paper provides an overall introduction of our Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems for Southeast Asian languages. As not much existing work has been carried out on such regional languages, a few difficulties should be addressed before building the systems: limitation on speech and text resources, lack of linguistic knowledge, etc. This work takes Bahasa Indonesia and Thai as examples to illustrate the strategies of collecting various resources required for building ASR systems.Comment: Published by the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Orange Technologies (ICOT 2017

A Unified Quantum NOT Gate

We study the feasibility of implementing a quantum NOT gate (approximate) when the quantum state lies between two latitudes on the Bloch's sphere and present an analytical formula for the optimized 1-to-$M$ quantum NOT gate. Our result generalizes previous results concerning quantum NOT gate for a quantum state distributed uniformly on the whole Bloch sphere as well as the phase covariant quantum state. We have also shown that such 1-to-$M$ optimized NOT gate can be implemented using a sequential generation scheme via matrix product states (MPS)

Surface Plasmon Enhancement on Infrared Photodetection

AbstractInAsSb based infrared photodetector is an alternative to the existing HgCdTe, PbSnTe, and InSb counterparts, but its room temperature performance is still relatively poor. One of the ways to improve its performance is through surface plasmon, which provides near field confinement that leads to enhancement in light matter interaction. In this work, the role of each parameter of two dimensional metallic hole arrays in plasmonic enhancement is studied in details, such as the periodicity of hole array, hole diameter and metal film thickness. The plasmonic resonances and their corresponding electric field distributions are comprehensively studied in finite difference time domain simulation, which also would serve as a guide for designing surface plasmon enhanced InAsSb infrared detector with high quantum efficiency and signal-to-noise ratio