Correlation between tongue manifestations and glucose, total cholesterol, and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in patients with acute cerebral infarction

AbstractObjectiveTo analyze the association between tongue manifestations and the levels of glucose (GLU), total cholesterol (TCH), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) in subjects with acute cerebral infarction.MethodsHospitalized patients with first unilateral cerebral infarction in the Neurological Department of Xuanwu Hospital were included and the correlation between tongue fur color, fur nature, and the levels of GLU, TCH, HDL-C were analyzed.ResultsHDL level in the thin fur group was higher than that in the thick fur group (P=0.02). The difference in the levels of GLU, TCH, and HDL-C among the groups was significant (P<0.05), classified in terms of slippery, moist, and dry fur. Further comparison between the groups by Student-Newman-Keuls test showed that GLU level in the dry fur group was the highest. Moreover, the TCH level in the slippery fur group was higher than the other two groups.ConclusionA correlation between tongue manifestations and GLU, TCH, HDL-C was identified in the patients with acute cerebral infarction

Ruthenium Incorporated Cobalt Phosphide Nanocubes Derived From a Prussian Blue Analog for Enhanced Hydrogen Evolution

Electrochemical water splitting in alkaline media plays an important role in mass production of hydrogen. Ruthenium (Ru), as the cheapest member of platinum-group metals, has attracted much attention, and the incorporation of trace amount of Ru with cobalt phosphide could significantly improve the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER) catalytic activity. In this work, ruthenium-incorporated cobalt phosphide nanocubes are synthesized via a reaction between Co–Co Prussian blue analog (Co-PBA) and ruthenium chloride (RuCl3) followed by the phosphidation. The sample with a Ru content of ~2.04 wt.% exhibits the best HER catalytic activity with a low overpotential of 51 and 155 mV, to achieve the current densities of −10 and −100 mA cm−2, respectively, and the Tafel slope of 53.8 mV dec−1, which is comparable to the commercial Pt/C. This study provides a new perspective to the design and construction of high performance electrocatalysts for HER and other catalytic applications in a relatively low price

Observation of whistler wave instability driven by temperature anisotropy of energetic electrons on EXL-50 spherical torus

Electromagnetic modes in the frequency range of 30-120MHz were observed in electron cyclotron wave (ECW) steady state plasmas on the ENN XuanLong-50 (EXL-50) spherical torus. These modes were found to have multiple bands of frequencies proportional to the Alfv\'en velocity. This indicates that the observed mode frequencies satisfy the dispersion relation of whistler waves. In addition, suppression of the whistler waves by the synergistic effect of Lower Hybrid Wave (LHW) and ECW was also observed. This suggests that the whistler waves were driven by temperature anisotropy of energetic electrons. These are the first such observations (not runaway discharge) made in magnetically confined toroidal plasmas and may have important implications for studying wave-particle interactions, RF wave current driver, and runaway electron control in future fusion devices

Computational Detection and Functional Analysis of Human Tissue-Specific A-to-I RNA Editing

A-to-I RNA editing is a widespread post-transcriptional modification event in vertebrates. It could increase transcriptome and proteome diversity through recoding the genomic information and cross-linking other regulatory events, such as those mediated by alternative splicing, RNAi and microRNA (miRNA). Previous studies indicated that RNA editing can occur in a tissue-specific manner in response to the requirements of the local environment. We set out to systematically detect tissue-specific A-to-I RNA editing sites in 43 human tissues using bioinformatics approaches based on the Fisher's exact test and the Benjamini & Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) multiple testing correction. Twenty-three sites in total were identified to be tissue-specific. One of them resulted in an altered amino acid residue which may prevent the phosphorylation of PARP-10 and affect its activity. Eight and two tissue-specific A-to-I RNA editing sites were predicted to destroy putative exonic splicing enhancers (ESEs) and exonic splicing silencers (ESSs), respectively. Brain-specific and ovary-specific A-to-I RNA editing sites were further verified by comparing the cDNA sequences with their corresponding genomic templates in multiple cell lines from brain, colon, breast, bone marrow, lymph, liver, ovary and kidney tissue. Our findings help to elucidate the role of A-to-I RNA editing in the regulation of tissue-specific development and function, and the approach utilized here can be broadened to study other types of tissue-specific substitution editing

PROTEOMIC CHANGES INDUCED BY KNOCKDOWN OF STATHMIN IN BT549 BREAST CANCER CELL LINES

Breast cancer incidence in women in the United States is 1 in 8 (about 13%). In the U.S., breast cancer death rates are higher than any other cancer besides lung cancer, and more than 25% cancers are classified as breast cancer. In 2008, an estimated 182,460 new cases of invasive, along with 67,770 of non-invasive (in situ), breast cancers were diagnosed in women in the U.S. About 40,480 women in the U.S. were projected to die in 2008 from breast cancer.Paclitaxel (Taxol), a microtubule (MT) stabilizing agent, was originally noted to be useful against breast cancers. Yet, like with many other cancer therapeutic agents, resistance to paclitaxel remains a significant problem in treating malignancies. One potential mechanism for the resistance observed is alterations in microtubule dynamics and altered binding of paclitaxel to its cellular target, the microtubule. Stathmin is a highly conserved, 17kDa protein that functions as an important regulator of microtubule dynamics. Several studies have shown potential correlations between stathmin levels and resistance to paclitaxel. The latest results from our collaborator Prof. Mary Ann Jordan at the University of California-Santa Barbara clearly show that reduction of the level of stathmin in BT549 cells increases their sensitivity to paclitaxel (vide infra). This reduction must obviously result in some changes in the affected cells' proteome, which delivers a signal of regulatory importance to the MT system; The goal of the project was to detect and characterize the earliest proteomic changes, using 2-D DiGE and MALDI-TOF-MS, of BT549 breast cancer cell lines engineered with constitutively lowered stathmin levels. Two proteins, Protein Kinase C epsilon and Microtubule-Associate Protein 6, were identified to be expressed at lower levels with statistical significance, and potential mechanisms exit for those two proteins to interact with stathmin and/or microtubules are discussed. Based on this information, it is proposed that stathmin may play a role in certain integrating as well as diverse intracellular regulatory pathways. It is expected that this more detailed understanding of protein profile changes in these cells will allow for more rational decision-making in further research of the mechanisms leading to paclitaxel resistance

Boosted stochastic fuzzy granular hypersurface classifier

In this work, we design a boosted stochastic fuzzy granular hypersurface classifier (BSFGHC) to resolve the classification issue of numerical data and non-numerical data (such as information granules) from the standpoint of granular computing. The scheme is divided into three parts: first, we present an adaptive cluster center clustering (ACCC) algorithm to achieve cluster centers of the data and to realize the fuzzy granulation of data parallelly based on Spark, which dramatically improves the granulation efficiency; second, we build a fuzzy granular space, design various fuzzy granular operators and measurement in the space to construct fuzzy granular hypersurfaces, create the loss function, and employ Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) to resolve the optimal fuzzy granular hypersurfaces; third, we randomly divide the fuzzy granules to train multiple optimal fuzzy granular hypersurfaces and combine with the classification accuracy of fuzzy hypersurfaces and the difficulty of fuzzy granule subset classification to form a boosted fuzzy hypersurface to predict the data comprehensively. Experimental results and theoretical analysis demonstrate the outstanding performance of the method

Optimal Design and Analysis of Cavitating Law for Well-Cellar Cavitating Mechanism Based on MBD-DEM Bidirectional Coupling Model

A variable velocity parallel four-bar cavitating mechanism for well-cellar can form the well-cellar cavitation which suits for well-cellar transplanting under a continuous operation. In order to improve the cavitating quality, this paper analyzed the structural composition and working principle of the cavitating mechanism and established the bidirectional coupling model of multi-body dynamics and the discrete element between the cavitating mechanism and soil through Recurdyn and EDEM software. Based on the model, a three-factor, five-level quadratic orthogonal rotational combination design test was conducted with the parameters of the cavitating mechanism as the experimental factors and the parameters of the cavitation as the response index to obtain the optimal parameter combination, and a virtual simulation test was conducted for the optimal parameter combination in order to study the cavitating law of the cavitating mechanism and soil. The test results showed that the depth of the cavitation was 188.6 mm, the vertical angle of the cavitation was 90.4°, the maximum diameter of the cavitation was 76.1 mm, the minimum diameter of the cavitation was 68.5 mm, and the variance in the diameters for the cavitation was 5.42 mm2. The cavitating mechanism with optimal parameters based on the Recurdyn–EDEM bidirectional coupling mode could further improve the cavitating quality

Study on the Visible-Light Photocatalytic Performance and Degradation Mechanism of Diclofenac Sodium under the System of Hetero-Structural CuBi2O4/Ag3PO4 with H2O2

Two kinds of CuBi2O4/Ag3PO4 with different heterojunction structures were prepared based on the combination of hydrothermal and in-situ precipitation methods with surfactant additives (sodium citrate and sodium stearate), and their characteristics were systematically resolved by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET), X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM)/ High-resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM), UV-vis Diffuse Reflectance Spectra (DRS) and Photoluminescence (PL). Meanwhile, the photocatalytic properties of the catalysts were determined for diclofenac sodium (DS) degradation and the photocatalytic mechanism was also explored. The results indicate that both of the two kinds of CuBi2O4/Ag3PO4 exhibit higher photocatalytic efficiency, mineralization rate, and stability than that of pure CuBi2O4 or Ag3PO4. Moreover, the catalytic activity of CuBi2O4/Ag3PO4 can be further enhanced by adding H2O2. The free radical capture experiments show that in the pure CuBi2O4/Ag3PO4 photocatalytic system, the OH• and O2•− are the main species participating in DS degradation; however, in the CuBi2O4/Ag3PO4 photocatalytic system with H2O2, all OH•, h+, and O2•− take part in the DS degradation, and the contribution order is OH• &gt; h+ &gt; O2•−. Accordingly, the photocatalytic mechanism of CuBi2O4/Ag3PO4 could be explained by the Z-Scheme theory, while the catalysis of CuBi2O4/Ag3PO4 with H2O2 follows the heterojunction energy band theory