Preparation and Characterization of a Standardized Anticonvulsant Ginseng Rb Extract from Panax quinquefolius L.

A ginseng Rb extract (GRbE) containing three major ingredients of ginsenoside Rb1 (G-Rb1), ginsenoside Rb3 (G-Rb3) and ginsenoside Rd (G-Rd) has been shown to have anticonvulsant and neuroprotective activity. As such, sufficient characterization and standardization of this active GRbE are demanded to facilitate an ongoing preclinical investigation on its potential for the treatment of epilepsy. In the investigation, the methods for generating the active GRbE and isolating G-Rb1, G-Rb3, and G-Rd in large scale from Panax quinquefolius are described. The chemical profile of GRbE was characterized by identifying the structure of the individual ingredients using NMR, and the concentration of individual ingredients was determined using HPLC. This study demonstrates the application of the established methods for reproducibly generating anticonvulsant GRbE, which is enriched in five panaxadiol glycosides of G-Rb1, ginsenoside Rb2 (G-Rb2), G-Rb3, ginsenoside Rc (G-Rc), and G-Rd with total ginsenosides over 90%, and for purifying G-Rb1, G-Gb3 and G-Rd with purity of 97.9%, 96.6% and 98.6%, respectively

An overview of genus Aesculus L.: ethnobotany, phytochemistry, and pharmacological Activities

The genus Aesculus L. (Hippocastanaceae) has 12 species distributed in eastern Asia, eastern and western North America, and Europe. In Europe and the United States, A. hippocastanum has been used for the treatment of chronic venous insufficiency, hemorrhoids, and postoperative edema. In China, A. chinensis var. chinense has been used as a stomachic and analgesic in the treatment of distention and pain in the chest and the abdomen, malaria, dysentery, and heart disease. The objective of this paper is to review the ethnobotany, phytochemistry, and pharmacological properties of the genus Aesculus. To date, more than 210 compounds have been isolated and identified primarily from the fruits or seeds of Aesculus, with polyhydroxylated triterpenoid saponins as the major active principles. Studies have confirmed that Aesculus seed extracts and isolates possess diverse activities, including anti-inflammatory, antitumor, antiviral, antifungal, antiangiogenic (vascular protection), anti-obesity, antioxidative, and antigenotoxic properties. Interestingly, detailed studies of the saponins from more eastern North American species and other uninvestigated Aesculus species are necessary to further confirm the chemotaxonomic value of the novel cytotoxic saponins discovered recently from A. pavia, an eastern North American species, and to fully understand the chemical profile of the genus. Animal investigations of these novel cytotoxic saponins on the potential for the treatment of cancer are also intriguin

Nematic crossover in BaFe2_2As2_2 under uniaxial stress

Raman scattering can detect spontaneous point-group symmetry breaking without resorting to single-domain samples. Here we use this technique to study $\mathrm{BaFe_2As_2}$, the parent compound of the "122" Fe-based superconductors. We show that an applied compression along the Fe-Fe direction, which is commonly used to produce untwinned orthorhombic samples, changes the structural phase transition at temperature $T_{\mathrm{s}}$ into a crossover that spans a considerable temperature range above $T_{\mathrm{s}}$. Even in crystals that are not subject to any applied force, a distribution of substantial residual stress remains, which may explain phenomena that are seemingly indicative of symmetry breaking above $T_{\mathrm{s}}$. Our results are consistent with an onset of spontaneous nematicity only below $T_{\mathrm{s}}$.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Thoroughly Modeling Multi-domain Pre-trained Recommendation as Language

With the thriving of pre-trained language model (PLM) widely verified in various of NLP tasks, pioneer efforts attempt to explore the possible cooperation of the general textual information in PLM with the personalized behavioral information in user historical behavior sequences to enhance sequential recommendation (SR). However, despite the commonalities of input format and task goal, there are huge gaps between the behavioral and textual information, which obstruct thoroughly modeling SR as language modeling via PLM. To bridge the gap, we propose a novel Unified pre-trained language model enhanced sequential recommendation (UPSR), aiming to build a unified pre-trained recommendation model for multi-domain recommendation tasks. We formally design five key indicators, namely naturalness, domain consistency, informativeness, noise & ambiguity, and text length, to guide the text-item adaptation and behavior sequence-text sequence adaptation differently for pre-training and fine-tuning stages, which are essential but under-explored by previous works. In experiments, we conduct extensive evaluations on seven datasets with both tuning and zero-shot settings and achieve the overall best performance. Comprehensive model analyses also provide valuable insights for behavior modeling via PLM, shedding light on large pre-trained recommendation models. The source codes will be released in the future

Functional variant of the carboxypeptidase M (CPM) gene may affect silica-related pneumoconiosis susceptibility by its expression: a multistage case-control study.

ObjectivesIn a genome-wide association study, we discovered chromosome 12q15 (defined as rs73329476) as a silica-related pneumoconiosis susceptibility region. However, the causal variants in this region have not yet been reported.MethodsWe systematically screened eight potentially functional single-neucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) in the genes near rs73329476 (carboxypeptidase M (CPM) and cleavage and polyadenylation specific factor 6 (CPSF6)) in a case-control study including 177 cases with silicosis and 204 healthy controls, matched to cases with years of silica dust exposure. We evaluated the associations between these eight SNPs and the development of silicosis. Luciferase reporter gene assays were performed to test the effects of selected SNP on the activity of CPM in the promoter. In addition, a two-stage case-control study was performed to investigate the expression differences of the two genes in peripheral blood leucocytes from a total of 64 cases with silicosis and 64 healthy controls with similar years of silica dust exposure as the cases.ResultsWe found a strong association between the mutant rs12812500 G allele and the susceptibility of silicosis (OR=1.45, 95% CI 1.03 to 2.04, p=0.034), while luciferase reporter gene assays indicated that the mutant G allele of rs12812500 is strongly associated with increased luciferase levels compared with the wild-type C allele (p<0.01). Moreover, the mRNA (peripheral blood leucocytes) expression of the CPM gene was significantly higher in subjects with silicosis compared with healthy controls.ConclusionsThe rs12812500 variant of the CPM gene may increase silicosis susceptibility by affecting the expression of CPM, which may contribute to silicosis susceptibility with biological plausibility

Assessing of programmed cell death gene signature for predicting ovarian cancer prognosis and treatment response

BackgroundProgrammed cell death (PCD) is an overwhelming factor affecting tumor cell metastasis, but the mechanism of PCD in ovarian cancer (OV) is still uncertain.MethodsTo define the molecular subtypes of OV, we performed unsupervised clustering based on the expression level of prognosis related PCD genes in the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-OV. COX and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) COX analysis were used to identify the OV prognostic related PCD genes, and the genes identified according to the minimum Akaike information criterion (AIC) were the OV prognostic characteristic genes. According to the regression coefficient in the multivariate COX analysis and gene expression data, the Risk Score of OV prognosis was constructed. Kaplan-Meier analysis was conducted to assess the prognostic status of OV patients, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were conducted to assess the clinical value of Risk Score. Moreover, RNA-Seq date of OV patient derived from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO, GSE32062) and the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) database (ICGC-AU), verifying the robustness of the Risk Score via Kaplan-Meier and ROC analysis.Pathway features were performed by gene set enrichment analysis and single sample gene set enrichment analysis. Finally, Risk Score in terms of chemotherapy drug sensitivity and immunotherapy suitability was also evaluated in different groups.Results9-gene composition Risk Score system was finally determined by COX and LASSO COX analysis. Patients in the low Risk Score group possessed improved prognostic status, immune activity. PI3K pathway activity was increased in the high Risk Score group. In the chemotherapy drug sensitivity analysis, we found that the high Risk Score group might be more suitable for treatment with PI3K inhibitors Taselisib and Pictilisib. In addition, we found that patients in the low-risk group responded better to immunotherapy.ConclusionRisk Score of 9-gene composition of PCD signature possesses promising clinical potential in OV prognosis, immunotherapy, immune microenvironment activity, and chemotherapeutic drug selection, and our study provides the basis for an in-depth investigation of the PCD mechanism in OV

Measurement of Stimulated Raman Side-Scattering Predominance and Energetic Importance in the Compression Stage of the Double-Cone Ignition Approach to Inertial Confinement Fusion

Due to its particular geometry, stimulated Raman side-scattering (SRSS) drives scattered light emission at non-conventional directions, leading to scarce and complex experimental observations. Experimental campaigns at the SG-II UP facility have measured the scattered light driven by SRSS over a wide range of angles, showing an emission at large polar angles, sensitive to the plasma profile and laser polarization. Furthermore, direct comparison with back-scattering measurement has evidenced SRSS as the dominant Raman scattering process in the compression stage, leading to the scattering loss of about 5\% of the total laser energy. The predominance of SRSS was confirmed by 2D particle-in-cell simulations, and its angular spread has been corroborated by ray-tracing simulations. The main implication is that a complete characterization of the SRS instability and an accurate measurement of the energy losses require the collection of the scattered light in a broad range of directions. Otherwise, spatially limited measurement could lead to an underestimation of the energetic importance of stimulated Raman scattering