Improving Knowledge and Attitudes towards Depression: a controlled trial among Chinese medical students

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Establishing an evidence-based method of improving knowledge and attitudes concerning depression has been identified as a priority in Chinese medical education. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a self-directed learning strategy as a part of student-centred education improved knowledge of and attitudes towards depression among Chinese medical students.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A controlled trial in which 205 medical students were allocated to one of two groups: didactic teaching (DT) group or a combined didactic teaching and self-directed learning (DT/SDL) group. The DT/SDL group continued having a series of learning activities after both groups had a lecture on depression together. Student's knowledge and attitudes were assessed immediately after the activities, one month and six months later.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The intervention (DT/SDL) group showed substantially greater improvements in recognition of depression as a major health issue and identifying helpful treatments than the DT group. Only the DT/SDL group demonstrated any improvement in attitudes. This improvement was sustained over six months.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Self-directed learning is an effective education strategy in improving medical students' knowledge of and attitudes towards depression.</p

The impact of Tegillarca granosa extract haishengsu on HL-60 cell

Haishengsu (Hss) is a purified protein from Tegillarca granosa that has been used as a traditional Chinese medicine to treat cancer for more than a century. In this study, we observed the impact of Haishengsu (Hss) on the proliferation and differentiation of HL-60 cells in the leukemic cell line by taking tretinoin and AS2O3 as a positive control and making a comparative analysis between the effect of Hss and tretinoin and AS2O3. We found that Hss could significantly inhibit the proliferation of HL-60 cells and caused most of the cells to stay in the G0/G1 phase. Its effect was much stronger than that of tretinoin and AS2O3, and the ability of Hss to induce differentiation was close to tretinoin. Hss functions probably by inhibiting the expression of the Bcl-2 and MPO genes and further promoting the expression of the Bax gene. Hss has a significant effect on both inhibiting the proliferation and inducing the differentiation of HL-60 cells. It is possible that Hss may be a new kind of clinical differentiation inducer

Grid-to-Point Deep-Learning Error Correction for the Surface Weather Forecasts of a Fine-Scale Numerical Weather Prediction System

Forecasts of numerical weather prediction models unavoidably contain errors, and it is a common practice to post-process the model output and correct the error for the proper use of the forecasts. This study develops a grid-to-multipoint (G2N) model output error correction scheme which extracts model spatial features and corrects multistation forecasts simultaneously. The model was tested for an operational high-resolution model system, the precision rapid update forecasting system (PRUFS) model, running for East China at 3 km grid intervals. The variables studied include 2 m temperature, 2 m relative humidity, and 10 m wind speed at 311 standard ground-based weather stations. The dataset for training G2N is a year of historical PRUFS model outputs and the surface observations of the same period and the assessment of the G2N performance are based on the output of two months of real-time G2N. The verification of the real-time results shows that G2N reduced RMSEs of the 2 m temperature, 2 m relative humidity, and 10 m wind speed forecast errors of the PRUFS model by 19%, 24%, and 42%, respectively. Sensitivity analysis reveals that increasing the number of the target stations for simultaneous correction helps to improve the model performance and reduces the computational cost as well indicating that enhancing the loss function with spatial regional meteorological structure is helpful. On the other hand, adequately selecting the size of influencing grid areas of the model input is also important for G2N to incorporate enough spatial features of model forecasts but not to include the information from the grids far from the correcting areas. G2N is a highly efficient and effective tool that can be readily implemented for real-time regional NWP models

Repairing effects of interleukin 11 (IL-11) towards high dose methotrexate-induced rat small intestinal mucositis and its impacts on T-lymphoblastic leukemia cell line

Objective(s): To investigate the efficacy of interleukin 11 (IL-11) towards the high dose methotrexate (HDMTX)-concurrent rat small intestinal mucositis and its impacts on the proliferation of the human T-lymphoblastic leukemia (CEM) cell line. Materials and Methods: 95 Wistar rats were randomly divided into five groups, the normal control group (A), the methotrexate (MTX) control group (B), the IL-11-pre-treated high-dose group (C), the post-IL-11-treatment high-dose group (D) and the post-IL-11-treatment low-dose group (E). After the intraperitoneal injection of MTX in the groups B-E, the rats were sacrificed at 1, 3, 5 and 7 days. The mortality, morphological and ultrastructural changes of small intestine of each group were observed. The cells were then cultured in vitro, and the MTT method was used to investigate the effects of different concentration of IL-11 on CEM proliferation and also on HDMTX-induced mucositis. Results: IL-11 could reduce the intestinal histopathological score, increase the height of small intestinal villi, promote the proliferation of intestinal lacunar cells and reduce the mortality rate of rats. The IL-11 pre-treatment group exhibited the best efficacies, demonstrating significant difference with the control group (

Nitrogen Supply Alters Rice Defense Against the Striped Stem Borer Chilo suppressalis

Plant nutrition status is closely associated with plant defense against insect herbivores. However, the way nitrogen supply regulates rice anti-herbivore is not clear. This study investigated the effects of low (LN, 0.3 mM) and high (HN, 3 mM) nitrate levels on rice resistance against the striped stem bore

Panax Notoginseng Saponins as a Novel Nature Stabilizer for Poorly Soluble Drug Nanocrystals: A Case Study with Baicalein

This study is aimed at seeking a nature saponin-based stabilizer for drug nanosuspensions. A poorly soluble drug (baicalein, BCL) was used as a model drug. BCL nanosuspensions with particle size of 156 nm were prepared by means of homogenization and converted into BCL nanocrystals (BCL-NC) stabilized with panax notoginseng saponins (PNS). It was found that PNS was able to prevent the aggregation of BCL-NS during storage and improve the redispersibility of BCL-NC after freeze-drying and spray-drying, compared with polymer stabilizer PVPK30. The freeze-dried and spray-dried BCL-NC with PNS exhibited excellent performance as evidenced by scanning_electron_microscope (SEM) analysis. It was the reason that PNS possessed the interfacial property (41.69 ± 0.32 mN/m) and electrostatic effect (−40.1 ± 1.6 mV), which could easily adsorb onto the surface of hydrophobic BCL nanocrystals and prevent from its aggregation. It is concluded that PNS can be used as an effective nature stabilizer for production of drug nanocrystals

Corticotropin releasing factor neurons in the visual cortex mediate long-term changes in visual function induced by early adversity

Early adversity can cause malfunction of the visual system in adulthood. Adult female but not male mice undergoing early chronic mild stress (ECMS) maintain ocular dominance (OD) plasticity after the critical period. How early stressful experiences have a long-term impact on it is largely unknown. Here, we observed a wide distribution of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF)-positive neurons, which mainly colocalized with a subpopulation of GABAergic interneurons in the mouse primary visual cortex (V1). Optogenetic activation of CRF-positive neurons transfected with AAV-ChR2 evoked inhibitory currents in nearby pyramidal cells. ECMS induced a reduction in the expression of CRF mRNA in adult mouse V1. Chemogenetic activation of V1 CRF neurons impaired OD plasticity in adult ECMS females. We further showed that local administration of the corticotropin releasing factor receptor 1 (CRFR1) antagonist via an osmotic minipump into the visual cortex mimicked OD plasticity in adult ECMS females. Whole-cell recording in layer 2/3 pyramidal neurons revealed that the CRFR1 antagonist reduced the short-term depression (STD) of evoked inhibitory postsynaptic current (IPSC) in females but not in males. Likewise, CRF agonists have the opposite effect. In summary, our findings indicate that the local CRF-CRFR1 system within V1 may mediate the long-term and sex-dependent effect of early stress experiences on visual plasticity and provide a target for the prevention of visual deficits in adults with a history of early-life adversity