Phylogenetic Tree Analysis of the Cold-Hot Nature of Traditional Chinese Marine Medicine for Possible Anticancer Activity

Traditional Chinese Marine Medicine (TCMM) represents one of the medicinal resources for research and development of novel anticancer drugs. In this study, to investigate the presence of anticancer activity (AA) displayed by cold or hot nature of TCMM, we analyzed the association relationship and the distribution regularity of TCMMs with different nature (613 TCMMs originated from 1,091 species of marine organisms) via association rules mining and phylogenetic tree analysis. The screened association rules were collected from three taxonomy groups: (1) Bacteria superkingdom, Phaeophyceae class, Fucales order, Sargassaceae family, and Sargassum genus; (2) Viridiplantae kingdom, Streptophyta phylum, Malpighiales class, and Rhizophoraceae family; (3) Holothuroidea class, Aspidochirotida order, and Holothuria genus. Our analyses showed that TCMMs with closer taxonomic relationship weremore likely to possess anticancer bioactivity.We found that the cluster pattern ofmarine organisms with reported AA tended to cluster with cold nature TCMMs. Moreover, TCMMs with salty-cold nature demonstrated properties for softening hard mass and removing stasis to treat cancers, and species withinMetazoa orViridiplantae kingdomof cold natureweremore likely to contain AA properties.We propose that TCMMs from these marine groups may enable focused bioprospecting for discovery of novel anticancer drugs derived from marine bioresources

Ginsenoside Rg3 treats acute radiation proctitis through the TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB pathway and regulation of intestinal flora

ObjectivesThis study aimed to investigate the protective effect of ginsenoside Rg3 (GRg3) against acute radiation proctitis (ARP) in rats.MethodsWistar rats were randomly divided into control, model, dexamethasone-positive, GRg3 low-dose, GRg3 medium-dose, and GRg3 high-dose groups. The ARP rat model was established by a single 22-Gy irradiation of 6 MV) X-rays. The distribution and function of intestinal flora were detected using 16S rRNA high-throughput sequencing, rectal tissue was observed by hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining, the expression of interleukin 1β (IL-1β) and IL-10 inflammatory factors was detected by ELISA, and mRNA and protein expression of toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), myeloid differentiation primary response 88 (MyD88), and nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB) were detected by RT-qPCR and Western blotting, respectively.ResultsGRg3 improved the symptoms of ARP in rats in a dose-dependent manner. The species distribution of intestinal flora in GRg3 rats was significantly different from that in ARP rats. These differences were more significant in the high-dose group, where the numbers of Ruminococcus, Lactobacillus, and other beneficial bacteria were significantly increased, whereas those of Escherichia, Alloprevotella, and other harmful bacteria were decreased. In addition, GRg3 was closely related to amino acid metabolism. After GRg3 treatment, the mRNA and protein expression of TLR4, MyD88, and NF-κB in rectal tissue was significantly down-regulated, and the level of downstream inflammatory factor IL-1β decreased, whereas that of IL-10 increased.ConclusionOur study indicated GRg3 as a new compound for the treatment of ARP by inhibiting the TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB pathway, down-regulating the expression of proinflammatory factors, thus effectively regulating intestinal flora and reducing inflammatory reactions

Genome-wide investigation and expression analysis of OSCA gene family in response to abiotic stress in alfalfa

Alfalfa is an excellent leguminous forage crop that is widely cultivated worldwide, but its yield and quality are often affected by drought and soil salinization. Hyperosmolality-gated calcium-permeable channel (OSCA) proteins are hyperosmotic calcium ion (Ca2+) receptors that play an essential role in regulating plant growth, development, and abiotic stress responses. However, no systematic analysis of the OSCA gene family has been conducted in alfalfa. In this study, a total of 14 OSCA genes were identified from the alfalfa genome and classified into three groups based on their sequence composition and phylogenetic relationships. Gene structure, conserved motifs and functional domain prediction showed that all MsOSCA genes had the same functional domain DUF221. Cis-acting element analysis showed that MsOSCA genes had many cis-regulatory elements in response to abiotic or biotic stresses and hormones. Tissue expression pattern analysis demonstrated that the MsOSCA genes had tissue-specific expression; for example, MsOSCA12 was only expressed in roots and leaves but not in stem and petiole tissues. Furthermore, RT–qPCR results indicated that the expression of MsOSCA genes was induced by abiotic stress (drought and salt) and hormones (JA, SA, and ABA). In particular, the expression levels of MsOSCA3, MsOSCA5, MsOSCA12 and MsOSCA13 were significantly increased under drought and salt stress, and MsOSCA7, MsOSCA10, MsOSCA12 and MsOSCA13 genes exhibited significant upregulation under plant hormone treatments, indicating that these genes play a positive role in drought, salt and hormone responses. Subcellular localization results showed that the MsOSCA3 protein was localized on the plasma membrane. This study provides a basis for understanding the biological information and further functional analysis of the MsOSCA gene family and provides candidate genes for stress resistance breeding in alfalfa

Impact of environmental tax on green development: A nonlinear dynamical system analysis.

With green development becoming a global movement, environmental tax has been adopted by many governments to promote green development. This study analyzes the impact of environmental tax on green development by using a four-dimension dynamical system. The establishment of the system is based on the complex and dynamic interactions among economic development, pollution emissions, resources consumption, and environmental tax, where roles of environmental tax are reflected by the linear parameters. A theoretic analysis shows the complexity of the behavior of the system. Mainly, the existence of chaos is inferred by Lyapunov exponent spectrum and bifurcation diagram, then verified by the presence of a chaotic attractor. An empirical study of the green development dynamical system in China demonstrates the particular evolution paths of economic growth, pollution intensity, and resource intensity under different environmental tax parameters. Results indicate a robust beneficial role of environmental tax on green development. Furthermore, when an environmental tax is imposed, a firm government control, an active consumer awareness, an advanced technology level can stimulate economic growth, decrease pollution intensity, and control the resource intensity. But the government control has a stronger effect. This study provides a viable and promising approach to analyze the role of imposing an environmental tax on green development and may have potential application in other areas and countries

Investigation of pilots' mental health and analysis of influencing factors in China: based on structural equation model

Abstract Background Pilots' physical and mental health might be significant contributing factors to flight safety. Exploring pilots’ health-related quality of life (HRQoL) is crucial for aviation security, health management, and psychological security. This study aimed to explore HRQoL and mental health of pilots and analyze the health characteristics and influencing factors, such as demographic data, personality traits, social support, and resilience. It may provide data for a theoretical basis for aviation security work and health management strategy. Methods This is a cross-sectional study using quantitative approaches. Two hundred twenty male pilots with an average age of 33.31 years participated. They answered a social demographic questionnaire, Symptom Checklist-90, Short Form 36 Health Survey Questionnaire, Perceived social support scale, Connor-Davidson resilience scale, and Big Five Personality Inventories, whose data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. Results The mediating effect of personality factors between resilience and the HRQoL of pilots was observed. Personality factors also mediated the relationship between social support and the mental health of pilots. Conclusion Pilots’ mental health and quality of life need to be taken seriously. Social support, resilience, and personality factors affect pilots’ mental health and quality of life

Co-planning of transmission and energy storage by iteratively including extreme periods in time-series aggregation

The co-planning problem of transmission and energy storage system (ESS) requires a large amount of historical and forecasted input data to account for the volatility of renewable energy and loads. However, the large input data usually make the planning problem difficult to solve, so time series aggregation is often used to reduce the computational complexity. Nevertheless, it is difficult to guarantee the reliability of operation on the whole input data. Therefore, this paper proposes an iterative method to select extreme scenarios, and designs two indicators to select extreme scenarios, considering the system power balance and peak shaving capacity situation. Based on these two indicators, the periods of maximum load shedding and the periods of maximum renewable energy curtailment will be selected as extreme scenarios in the results of the operational optimization problem. We iteratively add extreme scenarios to the set of scenarios of the planning problem until the reliability of system operation can be adequately met. At the same time, in order to ensure the effectiveness of extreme scenarios, the operation statuses of thermal units in those periods are also taken into account. Our method is tested on an IEEE RTS-24 system with some modification. The results show that our method can guarantee the reliability of the whole system and is superior to the method that simply selects extreme scenarios. Meanwhile, we also perform a sensitivity analysis of the price of energy storage

Tri-level expansion planning for transmission, energy storage, and renewable energy considering carbon emission limitation

In recent years, renewable energy (RE) has developed rapidly due to its environmentally friendly characteristics. However, RE has strong intermittency and volatility, and a high proportion of RE integration will have a huge impact on power systems. Moreover, some power systems also put forward requirements for RE utilization, which requires more flexible resources. Conventional units are limited in development under the carbon emission reduction policies. The energy storage system (ESS) can stabilize the volatility of RE power and alleviate transmission congestion. Therefore, to promote the energy transformation of power systems, it is necessary to jointly consider transmission network, ESS, and RE in power system planning. Considering that the planning decision-makers are different, this paper proposes a tri-level expansion planning model considering carbon emission limitation and RE development. In the upper-level (UL) problem, the transmission system operator constructs transmission lines and grid-side ESS to ensure load supply and carbon emission requirements. On the premise that the RE curtailment rate is within a certain range, the middle-level (ML) problem constructs RE units to maximize the RE installed capacity. Based on the construction results of the UL and ML problems, lower-level (LL) problems simulate economic dispatching from the perspective of the independent system operator. To solve the tri-level model, an equivalent bi-level model is transformed according to strong duality theory, and then the column and constraint generation (C&CG) algorithm is adopted to solve the bi-level problem. In case studies, the numerical results analyze the impacts of carbon emissions, RE curtailment rate, and ESS parameters on the planning results, which verifies the rationality of the approach proposed in this paper