Liquiritin alleviates spinal cord injury through suppression of inflammation, oxidative stress, and cell apoptosis in a rat model

Purpose: Liquiritin is an extract from Glycyrrhiza Radix, one of the oldest traditional Chinese herbal medicines, which is commonly used to treat various injuries and swellings. This study is aimed to determine whether liquiritin can protect spinal cord injuries (SCIs) from secondary injuries. Methods: A rat SCI model was established. After liquiritin treatment, the neural-function of Rats was determined by Basso, Beattie and Bresnahan (BBB) scores, paw withdrawal threshold (PWT), and thermal withdrawal latency (PWL). The effects of anti-inflammation, anti-oxidation, and anti-apoptosis of liquiritin were also examined in the rats with SCI. Moreover, the activities of several signaling elements, such as, inflammation-associated nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NFκB), toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), proliferative-related p38 mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPK) and myeloid differentiation primary response 88 (MyD88) which was involved in the TLR4 signaling, were used for further investigation of the underlying molecular mechanisms. Results: Liquiritin improved locomotor function recovery, alleviated allodynia and hyperalgesia, and decreased water content of spinal cord in SCI rats. Also, liquiritin reduced SCI–induced inflammatory responses by decreasing the levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), interleukin 1 beta (IL-1β), and IL-6. Liquiritin inhibited SCI–induced oxidative stress by decreasing malondialdehyde (MDA) level and increasing the levels of uperoxide dismutase (SOD) (p < 0.05), glutathione (GSH) (p < 0.01), and GSH-PX (p < 0.001). In addition, liquiritin alleviated spinal cord injury (SCI) –induced apoptosis of neural cells by decreasing the expression of cleaved caspase-9, -3 and cleaved poly ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP). Finally, liquiritin decreased spinal cord injury (SCI) -induced up-regulation of TLR4/MyD88/NF-κB and p38 MAPK signaling cascades. Conclusion: Liquiritin exerts protective role in SCI by reducing excessive inflammation, suppressing oxidative stress, and inhibiting neural cell apoptosis in a rat model of SCI. Thus, the agent can potentially be used for the management of SC

Links between Division Property and Other Cube Attack Variants

A theoretically reliable key-recovery attack should evaluate not only the non-randomness for the correct key guess but also the randomness for the wrong ones as well. The former has always been the main focus but the absence of the latter can also cause self-contradicted results. In fact, the theoretic discussion of wrong key guesses is overlooked in quite some existing key-recovery attacks, especially the previous cube attack variants based on pure experiments. In this paper, we draw links between the division property and several variants of the cube attack. In addition to the zero-sum property, we further prove that the bias phenomenon, the non-randomness widely utilized in dynamic cube attacks and cube testers, can also be reflected by the division property. Based on such links, we are able to provide several results: Firstly, we give a dynamic cube key-recovery attack on full Grain-128. Compared with Dinur et al.’s original one, this attack is supported by a theoretical analysis of the bias based on a more elaborate assumption. Our attack can recover 3 key bits with a complexity 297.86 and evaluated success probability 99.83%. Thus, the overall complexity for recovering full 128 key bits is 2125. Secondly, now that the bias phenomenon can be efficiently and elaborately evaluated, we further derive new secure bounds for Grain-like primitives (namely Grain-128, Grain-128a, Grain-V1, Plantlet) against both the zero-sum and bias cube testers. Our secure bounds indicate that 256 initialization rounds are not able to guarantee Grain-128 to resist bias-based cube testers. This is an efficient tool for newly designed stream ciphers for determining the number of initialization rounds. Thirdly, we improve Wang et al.’s relaxed term enumeration technique proposed in CRYPTO 2018 and extend their results on Kreyvium and ACORN by 1 and 13 rounds (reaching 892 and 763 rounds) with complexities 2121.19 and 2125.54 respectively. To our knowledge, our results are the current best key-recovery attacks on these two primitives

中美贸易冲突、全球价值链重构与国际产能合作

Abstract: At present, China-US economic and trade relations have entered a period of frequent frictions and economic and trade relations have changed from "ballast stone" (stable) Sino-US relations to "fire" (unstable). The US government frequently launches trade disputes with China, uses various trade relief tools to protect domestic sensitive industries and adopts unilateral trade measures to increase the price of Sino-US trade negotiations. Faced with the trend of US unilateralism in trade and the sustained slowdown of the global economy, the key questions are; how to improve China's right to speak and rule in the field of international trade and investment? How to enhance the ability of China and the vast number of developing countries to participate in the global value chain division of labor? Based on the perspective of global value chain reconstruction, this paper analyzes the industrial policy choices and micro-foundation of China's ability to participate in global economic governance based on the experience and evidence of China-Lithuania economic and trade investment cooperation. The study found that developed countries led by the United States have attracted domestic and foreign industrial capital and production factors to return to their own countries, raising the threshold for foreign investment and technical cooperation in developed countries. On the contrary, the space for seeking international capacity cooperation among developing countries has greatly increased. If the integration of the “Belt and Road” value chain is substantially promoted, China and the countries along the route will gradually transfer from the low-end state of the global value chain, which is embedded in Europe and America, to the regional value chain form of high value-added links of mutual benefit and win-win scenarios. Keywords: Sino-US trade conflict; Regional value chain; International capacity cooperation; Global economic governance.当前中美经贸关系步入摩擦多发期，经贸关系已从中美关系的“压舱石”蜕变为“导火索”。美国政府频繁发起对华贸易争端，使用各种贸易救济工具为国内敏感产业提供保护，采取单边贸易措施提高在中美贸易谈判中的要价。面临美国的贸易单边主义政策和全球经济持续性放缓的趋势，如何提升中国在国际贸易投资领域的话语权和规则制定权？如何增强中国和广大发展中国家参与全球价值链分工的能力？本文从全球价值链重构视角，基于中国与立陶宛经贸投资合作的经验与证据，探析我国提升参与全球经济治理能力的产业政策选择与微观基础。研究发现美国为首的发达国家吸引国内外产业资本和生产要素向本国回流，提高了发达国家对外投资与技术合作的门槛，反而导致发展中国家之间寻求国际产能合作空间大为增加。若“一带一路”价值链整合得到实质性推进，中国与沿线国家将可能从嵌入欧美主导的全球价值链低端锁定状态，逐渐转换为互利共赢的高附加值环节的区域价值链形态。 【关键词】中美贸易冲突；区域价值链；国际产能合作；全球经济治

A Meet-in-the-Middle Attack on Round-Reduced mCrypton Using the Differential Enumeration Technique

This paper describes a meet-in-the-middle (MITM) attack against the round reduced versions of the block cipher mCrypton-64/96/128. We construct a 4-round distinguisher and lower the memory requirement from $2^{100}$ to $2^{44}$ using the differential enumeration technique. Based on the distinguisher, we launch a MITM attack on 7-round mCrypton-64/96/128 with complexities of $2^{44}$ 64-bit blocks and $2^{57}$ encryptions. Then we extend the basic attack to 8 rounds for mCrypton-128 by adding some key-bridging techniques. The 8-round attack on mCrypton-128 requires a time complexity $2^{100}$ and a memory complexity $2^{44}$. Furthermore, we construct a 5-round distinguisher and propose a MITM attack on 9-round mCrypton-128 with a time complexity of $2^{115}$ encryptions and a memory complexity of $2^{113}$ 64-bit blocks

Pregabalin alleviates postherpetic neuralgia by downregulating spinal TRPV1 channel protein

Purpose: To determine the mechanism involved in pregabalin-induced alleviation of postherpetic neuralgia in a rat model.Methods: Ninety-sixty healthy Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats were assigned to sham, model andpregabalin groups (32 rats per group). A model of postherpetic neuralgia (PN) was established. The expressions of IL-1β and TNF-α in spinal cord tissue were determined 7 days after administration of treatments. The proportions of fluorescence areas in astrocytes in the dorsal horn, prefrontal lobe and hippocampus, and level of spinal cord TRPV1 channel protein in each group were evaluated.Results: Relative to model rats, IL-1β and TNF-α in spinal cord of pregabalin rats were significantly reduced (p < 0.05). The areas of fluorescence in astrocytes in dorsal horn of spinal cord, prefrontal lobe and hippocampus of model group were significantly increased, relative to sham, but were decreased in rats in pregabalin group (p < 0.05).Conclusion: Pregabalin significantly alleviates postherpetic neuralgia via mechanisms which may be related to the inflammatory response of spinal dorsal horn and downregulation of TRPV1 channel protein expression. This finding may be useful in developing new drugs for alleviating postherpetic neuralgia

Thermal Error Modeling of the CNC Machine Tool Based on Data Fusion Method of Kalman Filter

This paper presents a modeling methodology for the thermal error of machine tool. The temperatures predicted by modified lumped-mass method and the temperatures measured by sensors are fused by the data fusion method of Kalman filter. The fused temperatures, instead of the measured temperatures used in traditional methods, are applied to predict the thermal error. The genetic algorithm is implemented to optimize the parameters in modified lumped-mass method and the covariances in Kalman filter. The simulations indicate that the proposed method performs much better compared with the traditional method of MRA, in terms of prediction accuracy and robustness under a variety of operating conditions. A compensation system is developed based on the controlling system of Siemens 840D. Validated by the compensation experiment, the thermal error after compensation has been reduced dramatically

Herb-Drug Interaction: Effects of Relinqing® Granule on the Pharmacokinetics of Ciprofloxacin, Sulfamethoxazole, and Trimethoprim in Rats

Relinqing granule (RLQ) is the best-selling Chinese patent drug for treatment of urinary system diseases. In this study, the effects of RLQ on the pharmacokinetics of ciprofloxacin, sulfamethoxazole, and trimethoprim in SD rats were investigated. Rats were randomly divided into control group 1, control group 2, RLQ group 1, and RLQ group 2. RLQ group 1 and RLQ group 2 were treated orally with RLQ for 7 days, and rats were treated with the same volume of water in control group 1 and control group 2. Then, RLQ group 1 and control group 1 were given intragastrically ciprofloxacin on day 8, while RLQ group 2 and control group 2 were given intragastrically sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim on day 8. Blood samples were collected and determined. There was no significant influence of pharmacokinetic parameters of trimethoprim on two groups. But some pharmacokinetic parameters of ciprofloxacin and sulfamethoxazole in RLQ pretreated rats were evidently altered (P < 0.05), which indicated that absorption of ciprofloxacin and sulfamethoxazole in RLQ pretreated rats was significantly affected. It indicated the coadministration of RLQ would have an influence on the efficacy of ciprofloxacin and sulfamethoxazole, and the doses of ciprofloxacin tablet and compound sulfamethoxazole tablet need adjustment