202 research outputs found
Dynamics of individual Brownian rods in a microchannel flow
We study the orientational dynamics of heavy silica microrods flowing through
a microfluidic channel. Comparing experiments and Brownian dynamics simulations
we identify different particle orbits, in particular in-plane tumbling
behavior, which cannot be explained by classical Jeffery theory, and we relate
this behavior to the rotational diffusion of the rods. By constructing the
full, three-dimensional, orientation distribution, we describe the rod
trajectories and quantify the persistence of Jeffery orbits using temporal
correlation functions of the Jeffery constant. We find that our colloidal rods
lose memory of their initial configuration in about a second, corresponding to
half a Jeffery period.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure
Protective effect of crude polysaccharide from Pao-TianXiong derived from monkshood, against chronic renal failure in mice
Purpose: To investigate the effect of crude polysaccharide isolated from pao-tian-xiong on chronic renal failure in mice, and its monosaccharide composition.
Methods: Male Kunming mice were orally treated with adenine (211.5 mg/kg/day) for 7 days, followed by either crude polysaccharides (125, 250 or 500 mg/kg), or positive drug solution (jinguishenqi pill, 2000 mg/kg) for another 7 days (each group had 15 mice). Mice in normal and negative control groups were given saline. Mental and physical states, blood urine nitrogen (BUN) and serum creatinine (SCr), kidney morphological changes and organ indices were determined. Histopathological examination of spleen and kidney tissues was also performed. The monosaccharide composition of crude polysaccharide was determined by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS).
Results: Compared with negative control group, serum BUN (6.71 mmol/L vs. 8.61 mmol/L) and Cr (107.74 vs. 113.39 Ī¼mol/L) were significantly decreased by the crude polysaccharide isolate (p < 0.05), whereas epididymis index (0.2556 vs. 0.2135 %) and seminal vesicle index (0.5547 vs. 0.3945 %) were increased (p < 0.05). Histopathological examination showed that injuries to kidney, spleen, testis and epididymis decreased significantly. The crude polysaccharides contained mainly glucose, rhamnose, arabinose, galactose, mannose, galacturonic acid, glucuronic acid and xylose, and their contents ranged from 0.7 to 65 %.
Conclusion: These results suggest that the crude polysaccharides of Pao-tian-xiong ameliorates CRF symptoms in mice, thereby providing experimental evidence in support of its use as an anti-CRF drug
Guizhi-jia-houpu-xingzi decoction attenuates ovalbumin-induced allergic asthma via regulation of Toll-like receptor signal pathway
Purpose: To study the effect of Guizhi-jia-houpu-xingzi (GHX) on ovalbumin-induced allergic asthma in rats.Methods: An animal model of allergic asthma (AA) in rats was established by intraperitoneal injection (ip) of ovalbumin (OVA). Thereafter, GHX (375 mg/kg) was administered orally for 7 days. Pulmonary function, inflammatory cells, immunoglobulin E (Ig) E, interleukin-4 (IL)-4 and interferon-Ī³ (IFN)-Ī³ in serum and bronchoalveolar lavage fluids (BALF) were determined. Furthermore, mRNA expressions of Toll-like receptors (TLRs) signal pathway was determined using real time polymerase chain reaction PCR (q-RT-PCR).Results: GHX (375 mg/kg) significantly decreased respiratory rate (p < 0.01) and Penh value (p < 0.05) when compared with AA rats. The inflammatory cells (p < 0.01) and levels of IL-4 (p < 0.01) and IgE (p < 0.01) were significantly decreased by GHX treatment when compared with AA rats; whereas IFN-Ī³ (p < 0.05) was significantly increased. Furthermore, GHX significantly decreased the mRNA expressions of GATA binding protein (GATA)-3 (p < 0.01), TRL-2 (p < 0.01), TRL-4 (p < 0.01), myeloid differentiation factor 88 (MyD88) (p < 0.01), TNF receptor associated factor 6 (TRAF6) (p < 0.01) and Ī²-arrestin (p < 0.01) in lung tissues, relative to AA rats. However, GHX treatment led to significant up-regulation of mRNA expression of T-bet (p < 0.01).Conclusion: These results demonstrate that GHX possesses a potential for treating allergic asthma via regulation of Toll-like receptor (TLR) signal pathway. They also provide a scientific basis for the probable use of GHX in clinical treatment of allergic diseases in future.Keywords: Guizhi-jia-houpu-xingzi decoction, Ovalbumin, Allergic asthma, Toll-like recepto
A random walk description of the heterogeneous glassy dynamics of attracting colloids
We study the heterogeneous dynamics of attractive colloidal particles close
to the gel transition using confocal microscopy experiments combined with a
theoretical statistical analysis. We focus on single particle dynamics and show
that the self part of the van Hove distribution function is not the Gaussian
expected for a Fickian process, but that it reflects instead the existence, at
any given time, of colloids with widely different mobilities. Our confocal
microscopy measurements can be described well by a simple analytical model
based on a conventional continuous time random walk picture, as already found
in several other glassy materials. In particular, the theory successfully
accounts for the presence of broad tails in the van Hove distributions that
exhibit exponential, rather than Gaussian, decay at large distance.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figs. Submitted to special issue "Classical and Quantum
Glasses" of J. Phys.: Condens. Matter; v2: response to refere
And\^o dilations for a pair of commuting contractions: two explicit constructions and functional models
One of the most important results in operator theory is And\^o's \cite{ando}
generalization of dilation theory for a single contraction to a pair of
commuting contractions acting on a Hilbert space. While there are two explicit
constructions (Sch\"affer \cite{sfr} and Douglas \cite{Doug-Dilation}) of the
minimal isometric dilation of a single contraction, there was no such explicit
construction of an And\^o dilation for a commuting pair of
contractions, except in some special cases \cite{A-M-Dist-Var, D-S, D-S-S}. In
this paper, we give two new proofs of And\^o's dilation theorem by giving both
Sch\"affer-type and Douglas-type explicit constructions of an And\^o dilation
with function-theoretic interpretation, for the general case. The results, in
particular, give a complete description of all possible factorizations of a
given contraction into the product of two commuting contractions. Unlike
the one-variable case, two minimal And\^o dilations need not be unitarily
equivalent. However, we show that the compressions of the two And\^o dilations
constructed in this paper to the minimal dilation spaces of the contraction
, are unitarily equivalent.
In the special case when the product is pure, i.e., if strongly, an And\^o dilation was constructed recently in \cite{D-S-S},
which, as this paper will show, is a corollary to the Douglas-type
construction.
We define a notion of characteristic triple for a pair of commuting
contractions and a notion of coincidence for such triples. We prove that two
pairs of commuting contractions with their products being pure contractions are
unitarily equivalent if and only if their characteristic triples coincide. We
also characterize triples which qualify as the characteristic triple for some
pair of commuting contractions such that is a pure
contraction.Comment: 24 page
In silico screening of anti-inflammatory constituents with good drug-like properties from twigs of Cinnamomum cassia based on molecular docking and network pharmacology
Purpose: To investigate by in silico screening the anti-inflammatory constituents of Cinnamomum cassia twigs.
Methods: Information on the constituents of C. cassia twigs was retrieved from the online Traditional Chinese Medicines (TCM) database and literature. Inflammation-related target proteins were identified from DrugBank, Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM), Therapeutic Target Database (TTD), Genetic Association Database (GAD), and PharmGKB. The identified compounds were filtered by Lipinskiās rules with Discovery Studio software. The āLibdockā module was used to perform molecular docking; LibdockScores and default cutoff values for hydrogen bonds and van der Waals interactions were recorded. LibdockScores between the prototype ligand and target protein were set as the threshold; compounds with higher LibdockScores than threshold were regarded as active compounds. Cytoscape software was used to construct active constituent-target protein interaction networks.
Results: Sixty-nine potential inflammatory constituents with good drug-like properties in C. cassia twigs were screened in silico based on molecular docking and network pharmacology analysis. JAK2, mPEGS-1, COX-2, IL-1Ī², and PPARĪ³ were considered the five most important target proteins. Compounds such as methyl dihydromelilotoside, hierochin B, dihydromelilotoside, dehydrodiconiferyl alcohol, balanophonin, phenethyl (E)-3-[4-methoxyphenyl]-2-propenoate, quercetin, and luteolin each interacted with more than six of the selected target proteins.
Conclusion: C. cassia twigs possess active compounds with good drug-like properties that can potentially be developed to treat inflammation with multi-components on multi-targets
Effects of fully open-air [CO2] elevation on leaf photosynthesis and ultrastructure of Isatis indigotica Fort
Traditional Chinese medicine relies heavily on herbs, yet there is no information on how these herb plants would respond to climate change. In order to gain insight into such response, we studied the effect of elevated [CO2] on Isatis indigotica Fort, one of the most popular Chinese herb plants. The changes in leaf photosynthesis,chlorophyll fluorescence, leaf ultrastructure and biomass yield in response to elevated [CO2] (550619 mmol molā1) were determined at the Free-Air Carbon dioxide Enrichment (FACE) experimental facility in North China. Photosynthetic ability of I. indigotica was improved under elevated [CO2]. Elevated [CO2] increased net photosynthetic rate (PN), water use efficiency (WUE) and maximum rate of electron transport (Jmax) of upper most fully-expended leaves, but not stomatal conductance (gs), transpiration ratio (Tr) and maximum velocity of carboxylation (Vc,max). Elevated [CO2] significantly increased leaf intrinsic efficiency of PSII (Fvā/Fmā) and quantum yield of PSII(WPSII), but decreased leaf non-photochemical quenching (NPQ), and did not affect leaf proportion of open PSII reaction centers (qP) and maximum quantum efficiency of PSII (Fv/Fm). The structural chloroplast membrane, grana layer and stroma thylakoid membranes were intact under elevated [CO2], though more starch grains were accumulated within the chloroplasts than that of under ambient [CO2]. While the yield of I. indigotica was higher due to the improved photosynthesis under elevated [CO2], the content of adenosine, one of the functional ingredients in indigowoad
root was not affected
The role of Th17 cells in endocrine organs: Involvement of the gut, adipose tissue, liver and bone
T Helper 17 (Th17) cells are adaptive immune cells that play myriad roles in the body. Immuneāendocrine interactions are vital in endocrine organs during pathological states. Th17 cells are known to take part in multiple autoimmune diseases over the years. Current evidence has moved from minimal to substantial that Th17 cells are closely related to endocrine organs. Diverse tissue Th17 cells have been discovered within endocrine organs, including gut, adipose tissue, liver and bone, and these cells are modulated by various secretions from endocrine organs. Th17 cells in these endocrine organs are key players in the process of an array of metabolic disorders and inflammatory conditions, including obesity, insulin resistance, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC), osteoporosis and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). We reviewed the pathogenetic or protective functions played by Th17 cells in various endocrine tissues and identified potential regulators for plasticity of it. Furthermore, we discussed the roles of Th17 cells in crosstalk of gut-organs axis
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