The Underlying Mechanisms of Chinese Herbal Medicine-Induced Apoptotic Cell Death in Human Cancer

The high incidence of cancer is a global burden. Cancer cells acquire immortality, which results in loss of control in cell proliferation and population expansion. Cancer cells undergo a series of genomic instability, leading to mutated amplification or deletion of certain genes that strictly control the cell fate. Programmed cell death is a mechanism of cell fate control that is aberrantly regulated in cancer cells. Apoptosis is the major form of programmed cell death regulated by both intrinsic and extrinsic pathways. Discovering effective and specific alternative solutions that can reprogram apoptosis in cancer cells is always a challenge. Chinese herbal medicine has captured increasing attention from both researchers and manufacturers, as evidenced by observable curative effects from previous clinical experience. Hence, to clarify and reinforce the understanding of the effect of Chinese medicine on cancer, in this chapter, we will retrospectively review the latest 5 years of literature and summarize the mode of action of Chinese herbal medicine on apoptotic cell death in cancer. Both Chinese medicine-induced intrinsic and extrinsic mechanisms of apoptosis will be discussed, and common compounds from Chinese medicine with druggable potential as novel apoptosis-inducing agents will be highlighted

Heavy Metal Emission Characteristics of Urban Road Runoff

Pavement runoff sampling points were set up on the main roads of Chengdu city. Six rainfall-runoff events from July to September in 2017 were sampled by synchronous observation of rainfall, runoff and pollution. The concentration changes of copper, lead, zinc, chromium and cadmium in the runoff process were monitored, and the pollution emission regularity and initial scouring effect were studied. The results show that the emission regularity of pavement runoff pollution is closely related to rainfall characteristics and pollutant occurrence, and the concentration of dissolved heavy metals reaches its peak at the initial stage of runoff. The peak time of particulate heavy metal concentration lagged slightly behind that of rainfall intensity. There is a big difference between the strength of initial scouring degree and dissolved heavy metals the stronger the initial scouring degree of total heavy metals, the weaker the dissolved heavy metals. Reducing pavement runoff in the early stage of rainfall is an effective means to control heavy metal pollution

Construction of efficient blue AIE emitters with triphenylamine and TPE moieties for non-doped OLEDs

In this paper, by merging the hole-dominated triphenylamine (TPA) and tetraphenylethene (TPE) moieties together with different linkage positions, four derivatives of 1,2-bis[4'-(diphenylamino)biphenyl-4-yl]-1,2-diphenylethene (2TPATPE) were successfully synthesized with confirmed structures, and their thermal, optical and electronic properties were fully investigated. Thanks to the introduction of the meta-linkage mode on the TPE core, their p-conjugation length could be effectively restricted to ensure blue emission. The non-doped OLEDs based on these four emitters exhibit blue emissions from 443–466 nm, largely blue-shifted with respect to the green emission of 2TPATPE (514 nm). Meanwhile, good electroluminescence efficiencies with Lmax, C,max, and P,max of up to 8160 cd m-2 , 3.79 cd A-1, and 2.94 Im W-1 respectively, have also been obtained, further validating our rational design of blue AIE fluorophores

Aggregation-Induced Emission Luminogens for Direct Exfoliation of 2D Layered Materials in Ethanol

© 2020 Wiley-VCH GmbH Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) luminogens are an important type of advanced functional materials with fantastic optical properties and have found potential applications in organic electronics, biochemistry, and molecular imaging. Herein, this article presents a novel application of AIE luminogens (AIEgens) for efficient exfoliation of layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs, such as MoS2 and WSe2). From the 1H NMR spectroscopic analysis, the designed AIEgens can insert into the space between layers of MoS2 in ethanol solution and the dynamic molecular rotation against the weak interactions affords large-scale few-layer MoS2 nanosheets (7–8 layers) with enhanced smoothness. The 3D AIEgens play a significant role in preserving the crystal lattice of MoS2 even at high pressure (>15 GPa). More importantly, the new approach can also be used for exfoliation of WSe2 to achieve large-scale few-layer nanosheets. The present work thus provides a facile and high yielding synthetic method for accessing on a large scale 2D layered materials with enhanced properties for high-technology applications

Constraint Satisfied Model Predictive Control Strategy for MMC Energy Storage System Based on Super Capacitor

With the continuous development of power electronics technology and the large-scale access of new energy power generation, the stable operation of the power grid is facing huge challenges. The MMC energy storage system has attracted more and more attention due to its strong ability to support the grid. However, the MMC energy storage system has a complex structure and contains many devices, and the research on high-performance control technology has always been a difficult point. In response to the above problems, this article proposes a constraint satisfaction model predictive control method for MMC energy storage system based on super capacitor. In the article, the operation mechanism of MMC energy storage system is analyzed, and the discrete domain mathematical model of MMC-ESSC is established. The article studies the prediction method of the future internal and external variables of the system, the rolling optimization mechanism and the method of establishing the objective function, and finally carries on the experiments verification. The analysis of experimental results shows that proposed control technology has high dynamic characteristics and efficiency

Spatial-Frequency Domain Imaging: An Emerging Depth-Varying and Wide-Field Technique for Optical Property Measurement of Biological Tissues

Measurement of optical properties is critical for understanding light-tissue interaction, properly interpreting measurement data, and gaining better knowledge of tissue physicochemical properties. However, conventional optical measuring techniques are limited in point measurement, which partly hinders the applications on characterizing spatial distribution and inhomogeneity of optical properties of biological tissues. Spatial-frequency domain imaging (SFDI), as an emerging non-contact, depth-varying and wide-field optical imaging technique, is capable of measuring the optical properties in a wide field-of-view on a pixel-by-pixel basis. This review first describes the typical SFDI system and the principle for estimating optical properties using the SFDI technique. Then, the applications of SFDI in the fields of biomedicine, as well as food and agriculture, are reviewed, including burn assessment, skin tissue evaluation, tumor tissue detection, brain tissue monitoring, and quality evaluation of agro-products. Finally, a discussion on the challenges and future perspectives of SFDI for optical property estimation is presented

An 8-Gbps, Low-Jitter, Four-Channel Transmitter with a Fractional-Spaced Feed-Forward Equalizer

An 8 gigabits per second (Gbps), low-jitter, four-channel transmitter with fractional-spaced feed-forward equalizer (FFE) is designed to meet the demand for broad transmission bandwidth in serial data communications. A novel frequency divider chain (FDC) architecture is developed, to satisfy the time requirements for high-speed data serialization. Moreover, a reconfigurable output driver circuit is employed to ensure compatibility with different protocols. In addition, a three-tap fractional-spaced FFE, which can enhance signal bandwidth significantly, is proposed, to compensate for channel loss. The transmitter was simulated and validated based on the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) 55-nm process. The post-layout simulation results show the following: The tuning range of the phase-locked loop (PLL) can cover 1.6 to 4.6 GHz. At an output frequency of 4 GHz, the root-mean-square jitter (RJ) of the PLL after integration from phase noise was 1.93 ps. With an 8 Gbps output data rate, using the pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS)-31 as a data source to simulate the whole transmitter, the power consumption values of the PLL and drive circuit were 27.0 and 29.2 mW, respectively, and the eye width and the valid eye height of output data were 0.76 unit interval (UI) and 0.68

An 8-Gbps, Low-Jitter, Four-Channel Transmitter with a Fractional-Spaced Feed-Forward Equalizer

An 8 gigabits per second (Gbps), low-jitter, four-channel transmitter with fractional-spaced feed-forward equalizer (FFE) is designed to meet the demand for broad transmission bandwidth in serial data communications. A novel frequency divider chain (FDC) architecture is developed, to satisfy the time requirements for high-speed data serialization. Moreover, a reconfigurable output driver circuit is employed to ensure compatibility with different protocols. In addition, a three-tap fractional-spaced FFE, which can enhance signal bandwidth significantly, is proposed, to compensate for channel loss. The transmitter was simulated and validated based on the Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) 55-nm process. The post-layout simulation results show the following: The tuning range of the phase-locked loop (PLL) can cover 1.6 to 4.6 GHz. At an output frequency of 4 GHz, the root-mean-square jitter (RJ) of the PLL after integration from phase noise was 1.93 ps. With an 8 Gbps output data rate, using the pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS)-31 as a data source to simulate the whole transmitter, the power consumption values of the PLL and drive circuit were 27.0 and 29.2 mW, respectively, and the eye width and the valid eye height of output data were 0.76 unit interval (UI) and 0.68