Traditional Chinese Medicines in Treatment of Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) occurs in 95% of the diabetic populations. Management of T2DM is a challenge. Traditional Chinese medicines (TCM) are usually served as adjuvants used to improve diabetic syndromes in combination of routine antidiabetic drugs. For single-herb prescriptions, Ginseng, Bitter melon, Golden Thread, Fenugreek, Garlic, and Cinnamon might have antidiabetic effects in T2DM patients. Among 30 antidiabetic formulas approved by the State Food and Drugs Administrator of China, top 10 of the most frequently prescribed herbs are Membranous Milkvetch Root, Rehmannia Root, Mongolian Snakegourd Root, Ginseng, Chinese Magnoliavine Fruit, Kudzuvine Root, Dwarf Lilyturf Tuber, Common Anemarrhena Rhizome, Barbary Wolfberry Fruit, and India Bread, which mainly guided by the theory of TCM. Their action mechanisms are related to improve insulin sensitivity, stimulate insulin secretion, protect pancreatic islets, and even inhibit intake of intestinal carbohydrates. However, it is very difficult to determine antihyperglycemic components of TCM. Nevertheless, TCM are becoming popular complementary and alternative medicine in treatment of syndromes of T2DM. In the future, it requires further validation of phytochemical, pharmacological, and clinical natures of TCM in T2DM in the future studies, especially for those herbs with a high prescription frequency

Vibration suppression using fractional-order disturbance observer based adaptive grey predictive controller

A novel control strategy is proposed for vibration suppression using an integration of a fractional-order disturbance observer (FDOB) and an adaptive grey predictive controller (AGPC). AGPC is utilized to realize outer loop control for better transient performance by predicting system outputs ahead with metabolic GM(1,1) model, and an adaptive step switching module is adopted for the grey predictor in AGPC. FDOB is used to obtain disturbance estimate and generate compensation signal, and as the order of Q-filter is expanded to real-number domain, FDOB has a wider range to select a suitable tradeoff between robustness and vibration suppression. For implementation of the fractional order Q-filter, broken-line approximation method is introduced. The proposed control strategy is simple in control-law derivation, and its effectiveness is validated by numerical simulations

Numerical analysis of the slub yarn breaking strength using finite element method

The numerical analysis of the slub yarn breaking strength has been made by using the finite element method (FEM). The slub yarn has been considered as skeletal structures since the yarn longitudinal length is much larger than its horizontal cross-section. Then, the accuracy of the proposed FEM model in calculating the slub yarn breaking strength has been validated by comparing the calculated results with the experimental data. This model can be used to calculate the slub yarn breaking strength normally and provides a theoretical support for product design

Ananas comosus

In this study, we aimed to investigate the effect and action mechanisms of pineapple leaf phenols (PLPs) on liver fat metabolism in high-fat diet-fed mice. Results show that PLP significantly reduced abdominal fat and liver lipid accumulation in high-fat diet-fed mice. The effects of PLP were comparable with those of FB. Furthermore, at the protein level, PLP upregulated the expression of carnitine palmitoyltransferase 1 (CPT-1), whereas FB had no effects on CPT-1 compared with the HFD controls. Regarding mRNA expression, PLP mainly promoted the expression of CPT-1, PGC1a, UCP-1, and AMPK in the mitochondria, whereas FB mostly enhanced the expression of Ech1, Acox1, Acaa1, and Ehhadh in peroxisomes. PLP seemed to enhance fat metabolism in the mitochondria, whereas FB mainly exerted the effect in peroxisomes. In addition, p-coumaric acid (CA), one of the main components from PLP, significantly inhibited fat accumulation in oleic acid-induced HepG2 cells. CA also significantly upregulated CPT-1 mRNA and protein expressions in HepG2 cells. We, firstly, found that PLP enhanced liver fat metabolism by upregulating CPT-1 expression in the mitochondria and might be promising in treatment of fatty liver diseases as alternative natural products. CA may be one of the active components of PLP

Photon-assistant Fano resonance in coupled multiple quantum dots

Based on calculations of the electronic structure of coupled multiple quantum dots, we study systemically the transport properties of the system driven by an ac electric field. We find qualitative difference between transport properties of double coupled quantum dots (DQDs) and triple quantum dots. For both symmetrical and asymmetrical configurations of coupled DQDs, the field can induce the photon-assisted Fano resonances in current-AC frequency curve in parallel DQDs, and a symmetric resonance in serial DQDs. For serially coupled triple quantum dots(STQDs), it is found that the $\Lambda$-type energy level has remarkable impact on the transport properties. For an asymmetric (between left and right dots) configuration, there is a symmetric peak due to resonant photon induced mixing between left/right dot and middle dot. In the symmetric configuration, a Fano asymmetric line shape appears with the help of ``trapping dark state". Here the interesting coherent trapping phenomena, which usual appear in quantum optics, play an essential role in quantum electronic transport. We provide a clear physics picture for the Fano resonance and convenient ways to tune the Fano effects.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure