Polysaccharides from Portulaca oleracea L Improve Exercise Endurance and Decrease Oxidative Stress in Forced Swimming Mice

Purpose: To explore the effects of polysaccharides from Portulaca oleracea L. (POP) on exercise endurance and oxidative stress in forced-swimming mice.Methods: Forty-eight mice were divided into four groups of twelve animals each. All treatments were administered orally and daily for 28 days. Group A received isotonic saline solution (50 ml/kg bodyweight) as control group; B, C and D groups received 100, 200 and 400 mg/kg body wt. of POP as treatment groups, respectively. After the final treatment with POP, the mice were subjected to swimming to exhaustion and the exhaustive swimming time, blood lactic acid (BLA), blood glucose, malondialdehyde (MDA), superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and catalase (CAT) were measured.Results: The exhaustive swimming time of the POP-treated groups (967.3 ± 79.2, 1234.8 ± 97.6 and 1314.3 ± 107.3 s) was significantly longer than that of the control group (513.6 ± 41.2 s) (p < 0.05). After the exhaustive swimming exercise, BLA levels of the POP-treated groups (8.63 ± 0.91, 8.04 ± 0.86 and 7.51 ± 0.78 mmol/L) were significantly lower than that of the control group (11.39 ± 1.17 mmol/L) (p < 0.05). MDA levels of the POP-treated groups (2.69 ± 0.21, 2.41 ± 0.17 and 2.37 ± 0.23 U/mg.pro) were significantly lower than that of the control group (3.21 ± 0.29 U/mg.pro) (p < 0.05). On the other hand, blood glucose levels of the POP-treated groups (5.47 ± 0.48, 5.74 ± 0.57 and 6.04 ± 0.51 mmol/L) were significantly higher than that of the control group (4.89 ± 0.32 mmol/L) (p < 0.05). SOD levels of the POP-treated groups (124.36 ± 14.87, 136.39±13.48 and 145.87 ± 17.39 U/mg.pro) were significantly higher than that of the control group (108.41 ± 11.63 U/mg.pro) (p < 0.05). GPx levels of the POPtreated groups (68.24 ± 4.68, 71.33 ± 5.29 and 72.64 ± 5.99 U/mg.pro) were significantly higher than that of the control group (53.17 ± 5.24 U/mg.pro) (p < 0.05). CAT levels of the POP-treated groups (23.57 ± 1.71, 24.28 ± 2.14 and 26.72 ± 2.21 U/mg.pro) were significantly higher than that of the control group (19.48 ± 2.03 U/mg.pro) (p < 0.05).Conclusion: This study provides compelling evidence that POP can improve exercise endurance and decrease oxidative stress in forced swimming mice.Keywords: Polysaccharides, Portulaca oleracea L., Oxidative stress, Swimming, Exercise endurance

Thermoelectric property studies on thallium-doped lead telluride prepared by ball milling and hot pressing

Thallium doping into lead telluride has been demonstrated to increase the dimensionless thermoelectric figure-of-merit (ZT) by enhancing Seebeck coefficient due to the creation of resonant states close to Fermi level without affecting the thermal conductivity. However, the process is tedious, energy consuming, and small in quantities since it involves melting, slow cooling for crystal growth, long time annealing, post-crushing and hot pressing. Here we show that a similar ZT value about 1.3 at 400 °C is achieved on bulk samples with grain sizes of 3–7 μm by ball milling a mixture of elemental thallium, lead, and tellurium and then hot pressing the ball milled nanopowders

CAP interacts with cytoskeletal proteins and regulates adhesion‐mediated ERK activation and motility

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102140/1/emboj7601406-sup-0001.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/102140/2/emboj7601406.pd

Experimentally Engineering the Edge Termination of Graphene Nanoribbons

The edges of graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) have attracted much interest due to their potentially strong influence on GNR electronic and magnetic properties. Here we report the ability to engineer the microscopic edge termination of high quality GNRs via hydrogen plasma etching. Using a combination of high-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy and first-principles calculations, we have determined the exact atomic structure of plasma-etched GNR edges and established the chemical nature of terminating functional groups for zigzag, armchair and chiral edge orientations. We find that the edges of hydrogen-plasma-etched GNRs are generally flat, free of structural reconstructions and are terminated by hydrogen atoms with no rehybridization of the outermost carbon edge atoms. Both zigzag and chiral edges show the presence of edge states.Comment: 16+9 pages, 3+4 figure

Visual Working Memory Capacity Does Not Modulate the Feature-Based Information Filtering in Visual Working Memory

Background: The limited capacity of visual working memory (VWM) requires us to select the task relevant information and filter out the irrelevant information efficiently. Previous studies showed that the individual differences in VWM capacity dramatically influenced the way we filtered out the distracters displayed in distinct spatial-locations: low-capacity individuals were poorer at filtering them out than the high-capacity ones. However, when the target and distracting information pertain to the same object (i.e., multiple-featured object), whether the VWM capacity modulates the featurebased filtering remains unknown. Methodology/Principal Findings: We explored this issue mainly based on one of our recent studies, in which we asked the participants to remember three colors of colored-shapes or colored-landolt-Cs while using two types of task irrelevant information. We found that the irrelevant high-discriminable information could not be filtered out during the extraction of VWM but the irrelevant fine-grained information could be. We added 8 extra participants to the original 16 participants and then split the overall 24 participants into low- and high-VWM capacity groups. We found that regardless of the VWM capacity, the irrelevant high-discriminable information was selected into VWM, whereas the irrelevant fine-grained information was filtered out. The latter finding was further corroborated in a second experiment in which the participants were required to remember one colored-landolt-C and a more strict control was exerted over the VWM capacity

Three-dimensional Noninvasive Monitoring Iodine-131 Uptake in the Thyroid Using a Modified Cerenkov Luminescence Tomography Approach

BACKGROUND: Cerenkov luminescence tomography (CLT) provides the three-dimensional (3D) radiopharmaceutical biodistribution in small living animals, which is vital to biomedical imaging. However, existing single-spectral and multispectral methods are not very efficient and effective at reconstructing the distribution of the radionuclide tracer. In this paper, we present a semi-quantitative Cerenkov radiation spectral characteristic-based source reconstruction method named the hybrid spectral CLT, to efficiently reconstruct the radionuclide tracer with both encouraging reconstruction results and less acquisition and image reconstruction time. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We constructed the implantation mouse model implanted with a 400 µCi Na(131)I radioactive source and the physiological mouse model received an intravenous tail injection of 400 µCi radiopharmaceutical Iodine-131 (I-131) to validate the performance of the hybrid spectral CLT and compared the reconstruction results, acquisition, and image reconstruction time with that of single-spectral and multispectral CLT. Furthermore, we performed 3D noninvasive monitoring of I-131 uptake in the thyroid and quantified I-131 uptake in vivo using hybrid spectral CLT. Results showed that the reconstruction based on the hybrid spectral CLT was more accurate in localization and quantification than using single-spectral CLT, and was more efficient in the in vivo experiment compared with multispectral CLT. Additionally, 3D visualization of longitudinal observations suggested that the reconstructed energy of I-131 uptake in the thyroid increased with acquisition time and there was a robust correlation between the reconstructed energy versus the gamma ray counts of I-131 (r(2) = 0.8240). The ex vivo biodistribution experiment further confirmed the I-131 uptake in the thyroid for hybrid spectral CLT. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Results indicated that hybrid spectral CLT could be potentially used for thyroid imaging to evaluate its function and monitor its treatment for thyroid cancer