Antioxidant Properties of the Mung Bean Flavonoids on Alleviating Heat Stress

Background: It is a widespread belief in Asian countries that mung bean soup (MBS) may afford a protective effect against heat stress. Lack of evidence supports MBS conferring a benefit in addition to water. Results: Here we show that vitexin and isovitexin are the major antioxidant components in mungbean (more than 96 % of them existing in the bean seed coat), and both of them could be absorbed via gavage into rat plasma. In the plasma of rats fed with mungbean coat extract before or after exposure to heat stress, the levels of malonaldehyde and activities of lactate dehydrogenase and nitric oxide synthase were remarkably reduced; the levels of total antioxidant capacity and glutathione (a quantitative assessment of oxidative stress) were significantly enhanced. Conclusions: Our results demonstrate that MBS can play additional roles to prevent heat stress injury. Characterization of the mechanisms underlying mungbean beneficial effects should help in the design of diet therapy strategies to alleviate heat stress, as well as provide reference for searching natural medicines against oxidative stress induced diseases

Challenges in QCD matter physics - The Compressed Baryonic Matter experiment at FAIR

Substantial experimental and theoretical efforts worldwide are devoted to explore the phase diagram of strongly interacting matter. At LHC and top RHIC energies, QCD matter is studied at very high temperatures and nearly vanishing net-baryon densities. There is evidence that a Quark-Gluon-Plasma (QGP) was created at experiments at RHIC and LHC. The transition from the QGP back to the hadron gas is found to be a smooth cross over. For larger net-baryon densities and lower temperatures, it is expected that the QCD phase diagram exhibits a rich structure, such as a first-order phase transition between hadronic and partonic matter which terminates in a critical point, or exotic phases like quarkyonic matter. The discovery of these landmarks would be a breakthrough in our understanding of the strong interaction and is therefore in the focus of various high-energy heavy-ion research programs. The Compressed Baryonic Matter (CBM) experiment at FAIR will play a unique role in the exploration of the QCD phase diagram in the region of high net-baryon densities, because it is designed to run at unprecedented interaction rates. High-rate operation is the key prerequisite for high-precision measurements of multi-differential observables and of rare diagnostic probes which are sensitive to the dense phase of the nuclear fireball. The goal of the CBM experiment at SIS100 (sqrt(s_NN) = 2.7 - 4.9 GeV) is to discover fundamental properties of QCD matter: the phase structure at large baryon-chemical potentials (mu_B > 500 MeV), effects of chiral symmetry, and the equation-of-state at high density as it is expected to occur in the core of neutron stars. In this article, we review the motivation for and the physics programme of CBM, including activities before the start of data taking in 2022, in the context of the worldwide efforts to explore high-density QCD matter.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Published in European Physical Journal

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Effect of brazing temperature on microstructure and mechanical properties of TiAl/ZrB₂ joint brazed with CuTiZrNi filler

Abstract The TiAl alloy and ZrB₂-SiC ceramic are promising materials used at high temperature. One route to extend their unique applications under extreme conditions relies on successful brazing them together with proper fillers. In this work, brazing temperature influences on microstructural, mechanical, and fractural properties were systemically studied for brazed joints after brazing the TiAl to the ZrB₂-SiC with amorphous CuTiZrNi fillers. An optimized brazing condition was found as 1183 K for 1200s, yielding a high shear strength of 187 MPa. The joints were mainly consisted of AlCuTi, Ti₂Al, (Ti,Zr)₂(Cu,Ni), TiB, TiB₂, TiCu Ti₅Si₃, and TiC phases. Brazing temperature substantially changed joint composites. It is found that lower temperatures lead to insufficient reaction and remained filler and higher ones to large stress-induced microcracks. Based on element diffusions, a formation mechanism of brazed joint was also proposed

Brazing ZrB₂-SiC ceramics to Ti6Al4V alloy with TiCu-based amorphous filler

Abstract In this work, the Ti-6Al-4V alloy and ZrB₂-SiC ultra-high temperature ceramic joint was brazed by TiCuZrNi amorphous filler at 910 °C with varied holding time. The element diffusion, microstructure and precipitation phase of the joints were analyzed in details. Reaction products in the joints were identified as β-Ti, (Ti,Zr)₂(Cu,Ni), TiCu, Ti₂Cu, TiC, Ti₅Si₃, TiB and TiB₂. The formation schemes of reaction products were investigated. The holding time has substantial impacts on interfacial microstructure and shear strength of joints. A maximum shear strength of 345 MPa of the joint was reached under a brazing temperature of 910 °C and holding time of 1200 s. It is also found that the shear strength depends on the amount of eutectic structure and brittle compounds in the joints

Brazing Ti-48Al-2Nb-2Cr alloys with Cu-based amorphous alloy filler

Abstract In this work, the Ti-48Al-2Nb-2Cr (at. %) alloy was successfully brazed using a Cu-based amorphous filler in 600 s under varied brazing temperatures. The element diffusion, microstructure, and precipitation phase of the joints are analyzed in detail, and the formation schemes are discussed. Reaction products in the joints are found as AlCuTi, Ti2Al, α-Ti, and (Ti,Zr)2(Cu,Ni). The interfacial microstructures varied subjected to the brazing temperature, while the shear strength of the joint firstly increased, and then accordingly decreased. The maximum shear strength of 266 MPa was reached under a brazing temperature of 1213 K and a holding time of 600 s. A formation mechanism was proposed to explain the shear strength variation following the width and amount of brittle compounds in the interfacial reaction layer

Home-Based Transcutaneous Neuromodulation Improved Constipation via Modulating Gastrointestinal Hormones and Bile Acids

This study aims to investigate the role of transcutaneous neuromodulation (TN) on the regulation of gastrointestinal hormones and bile acids in patients with functional constipation (FC). Twenty FC patients were treated with TN for four weeks. The effects of TN on symptoms were evaluated by questionnaires. Plasma levels of serotonin (5-HT), motilin, somatostatin, and vasoactive intestinal peptide (VIP) were measured by ELISA and 12 individual bile acids assayed by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Results were as follows. (1) TN treatment increased the frequency of spontaneous bowel movement, improved the Bristol Stool Score, and reduced Patient Assessment of Constipation Symptom score and Patient Assessment of Constipation Quality of Life score. (2) FC patients showed decreased plasma levels of 5-HT, motilin, and VIP and an increased plasma level of somatostatin (P<0.05). Four-week TN treatment increased plasma levels of 5-HT and motilin and decreased the plasma level of somatostatin in the FC patients (P<0.05). (3) Taurocholic deoxycholate, taurocholic acid, and taurocholic lithocholic acid were increased in the FC patients (P<0.005) but reduced by TN treatment (P<0.05). This study has suggested that the therapy may improve the symptoms of FC by alleviating the disorders of gastrointestinal hormones and bile acids