Inactivation of myosin binding protein C homolog in zebrafish as a model for human cardiac hypertrophy and diastolic dysfunction

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Chemical Composition and Biological Properties of Essential Oils of Two Mint Species

Purpose: To analyze the composition of essential oils of two types of mint as well as compare the antimicrobial, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities of the two oils.Methods: Peppermint (M. piperita L.) and chocolate mint (M. piperita L.) oils were obtained by steam distillation in a Clevenger-type apparatus. The chemical composition of the essential oils was determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC/MS). The minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) of the essential oils were determined by broth dilution method. The antioxidant activities of the oils were determined by 2, 2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH)DPPH radical scavenging assay, β-Carotene-linoleic acid assay, andnitric oxide (NO) radical scavenging assay.Results: The two essential oils contain high levels of alcohol (43.47-50.10%) and terpene (18.55-21.07%) with the major compound being menthol (28.19-30.35%). The antimicrobial activity (minimum inhibitory concentration, MIC) of peppermint oil against E. coli, S. aureus and P. aeruginosa (0.15, 0.08, 0.92 %v/v, respectively) was stronger than that of chocolate mint (0.23, 0.09, 1.22 %v/v, respectively). In the anti-oxidant test including DPPH and β-Carotenelinoleic acid assays, peppermint oil showed superior antioxidant properties to chocolate mint oil (4.45 - 19.86 μl/mL). However, with regard to scavenging NO radical activity, chocolate mint oil exhibited higher activity than peppermint (0.31 and 0.42 μl/mL, respectively). Chocolate mint oil also exhibited higher anti-inflammatory activity than peppermint oil (0.03 and 0.08 μl/mL, respectively).Conclusion: The results obtained should help to clarify the functional applications of these folk herbs and their essential oils for aromatherapeutic healing and other folkloric uses.Keywords: Peppermint, Chocolate mint, Anti-microbial, Anti-oxidant, Anti-inflammator

Study on the Micro-structures of Long Fiber through Runner and Cavity in Injection Molding for Reinforced Thermoplastics (FRT)

[[abstract]]Lightweight technology has been applied into many industries especially for automotive to enhance the fuel efficiency. One of most famous methods is applied fiber-reinforced thermoplastics (FRT) technology, it includes short and long fiber-reinforced thermoplastics (FRT) to support lightweight technology. However, the enhancement mechanism by the microstructures of the fibers in FRT is still too complicated to understand. In this study, we designed a benchmark to study the fiber microstructures based on ASTM D638 with dog-bond system. First, we have tried to study how the geometry of cavity influences the fiber orientation during the injection processes. Furthermore, we have paid the attention on the variation of the fiber length distribution as the injection molding processing. Results show that the geometry of cavity has significant effect on the fiber orientation during the injection processes. Since the system has contraction and expansion structure, the orientation tensor component a11 corresponding to the flow direction, will be enhanced and then decreased along the cavity. Moreover, the fiber lengths have dramatically sharp distribution on skin layer when melt goes through the gate into the cavity. It will allow almost 90% lengths are broken through the skin layer. Meanwhile, using numerical visualization from runner to cavity through core layer, there is about 30% length broken during the journey in runner section. Finally, some fiber orientation results are compared with some literature’s. Results showed that our numerical predictions are matched with that of literature quite well in the trend.[[notice]]補正完

Involvement of the Cav3.2 T-type calcium channel in thalamic neuron discharge patterns

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Mice that have defects in their low-threshold T-type calcium channel (T-channel) genes show altered pain behaviors. The changes in the ratio of nociceptive neurons and the burst firing property of reticular thalamic (RT) and ventroposterior (VP) neurons in Cav3.2 knockout (KO) mice were studied to test the involvement of thalamic T-channel and burst firing activity in pain function.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Under pentobarbital or urethane anesthesia, the patterns of tonic and burst firings were recorded in functionally characterized RT and VPL neurons of Cav3.2 KO mice. Many RT neurons were nociceptive (64% under pentobarbital anesthesia and 50% under urethane anesthesia). Compared to their wild-type (WT) controls, fewer nociceptive RT neurons were found in Cav3.2 KO mice. Both nociceptive and tactile RT neurons showed fewer bursts in Cav3.2 KO mice. Within a burst, RT neurons of Cav3.2 KO mice had a lower spike frequency and less-prominent accelerando-decelerando change. In contrast, VP neurons of Cav3.2 KO mice showed a higher ratio of bursts and a higher discharge rate within a burst than those of the WT control. In addition, the long-lasting tonic firing episodes in RT neurons of the Cav3.2 KO had less stereotypic regularity than their counterparts in WT mice.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>RT might be important in nociception of the mouse. In addition, we showed an important role of Cav3.2 subtype of T-channel in RT burst firing pattern. The decreased occurrence and slowing of the bursts in RT neurons might cause the increased VP bursts. These changes would be factors contributing to alternation of pain behavior in the Cav3.2 KO mice.</p

Microbial fuel cells: a green and alternative source for bioenergy production

Microbial fuel cell (MFC) represents one of the green technologies for the production of bioenergy. MFCs using microalgae produce bioenergy by converting solar energy into electrical energy as a function of metabolic and anabolic pathways of the cells. In the MFCs with bacteria, bioenergy is generated as a result of the organic substrate oxidation. MFCs have received high attention from researchers in the last years due to the simplicity of the process, the absence in toxic by-products, and low requirements for the algae growth. Many studies have been conducted on MFC and investigated the factors affecting the MFC performance. In the current chapter, the performance of MFC in producing bioenergy as well as the factors which influence the efficacy of MFCs is discussed. It appears that the main factors affecting MFC’s performance include bacterial and algae species, pH, temperature, salinity, substrate, mechanism of electron transfer in an anodic chamber, electrodes materials, surface area, and electron acceptor in a cathodic chamber. These factors are becoming more influential and might lead to overproduction of bioenergy when they are optimized using response surface methodology (RSM)

Biomedical word sense disambiguation with word embeddings

There is a growing need for automatic extraction of information and knowledge from the increasing amount of biomedical and clinical data produced, namely in textual form. Natural language processing comes in this direction, helping in tasks such as information extraction and information retrieval. Word sense disambiguation is an important part of this process, being responsible for assigning the proper concept to an ambiguous term. In this paper, we present results from machine learning and knowledge-based algorithms applied to biomedical word sense disambiguation. For the supervised machine learning algorithms we used word embeddings, calculated from the full MEDLINE literature database, as global features and compare the results to the use of local unigram and bigram features. For the knowledge-based method we represented the textual definitions of biomedical concepts from the UMLS database as word embedding vectors, and combined this with concept associations derived from the MeSH term co-occurrences. Both the machine learning and the knowledge-based results indicate that word embeddings are informative and improve the biomedical word disambiguation accuracy. Applied to the reference MSH WSD data set, our knowledge-based approach achieves 85.1% disambiguation accuracy, which is higher than some previously proposed approaches that do not use machine-learning strategies.publishe

DHODH modulates transcriptional elongation in the neural crest and melanoma

Melanoma is a tumour of transformed melanocytes, which are originally derived from the embryonic neural crest. It is unknown to what extent the programs that regulate neural crest development interact with mutations in the BRAF oncogene, which is the most commonly mutated gene in human melanoma1. We have used zebrafish embryos to identify the initiating transcriptional events that occur on activation of human BRAF(V600E) (which encodes an amino acid substitution mutant of BRAF) in the neural crest lineage. Zebrafish embryos that are transgenic for mitfa:BRAF(V600E) and lack p53 (also known as tp53) have a gene signature that is enriched for markers of multipotent neural crest cells, and neural crest progenitors from these embryos fail to terminally differentiate. To determine whether these early transcriptional events are important for melanoma pathogenesis, we performed a chemical genetic screen to identify small-molecule suppressors of the neural crest lineage, which were then tested for their effects on melanoma. One class of compound, inhibitors of dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHODH), for example leflunomide, led to an almost complete abrogation of neural crest development in zebrafish and to a reduction in the self-renewal of mammalian neural crest stem cells. Leflunomide exerts these effects by inhibiting the transcriptional elongation of genes that are required for neural crest development and melanoma growth. When used alone or in combination with a specific inhibitor of the BRAF(V600E) oncogene, DHODH inhibition led to a marked decrease in melanoma growth both in vitro and in mouse xenograft studies. Taken together, these studies highlight developmental pathways in neural crest cells that have a direct bearing on melanoma formation

Predictors of betel quid chewing behavior and cessation patterns in Taiwan aborigines

BACKGROUND: Betel quid, chewed by about 600 million people worldwide, is one of the most widely used addictive substances. Cessation factors in betel quid chewers are unknown. The present study explores prevalence and the quit rate of betel quid chewing in Taiwan aborigines. Our goal was to delineate potential predictors of chewing cessation. METHODS: A stratified random community-based survey was designed for the entire aborigines communities in Taiwan. A total of 7144 participants were included between June 2003 and May 2004 in this study. Information on sociodemographic characteristics, such as gender, age, obesity, education years, marital status, ethnicity, and habits of betel quid chewing, smoking and drinking was collected by trained interviewers. RESULTS: The prevalence of betel quid chewers was 46.1%. Betel quid chewing was closely associated with obesity (OR = 1.61; 95% CI: 1.40–1.85). Betel quid chewers were most likely to use alcohol and cigarettes together. Quit rate of betel quid chewers was 7.6%. Betel quid chewers who did not drink alcohol were more likely to quit (OR = 1.89; 95% CI: 1.43–2.50). Alcohol use is a significant factor related to cessation of betel quid chewing, but smoking is not. CONCLUSION: Taiwan aborigines have a high prevalence of betel quid chewers and a low quit rate. Alcohol use is strongly association with betel quid chewing. Efforts to reduce habitual alcohol consumption might be of benefit in cessation of betel quid chewing

Effective Interventions and Decline of Antituberculosis Drug Resistance in Eastern Taiwan, 2004–2008

BACKGROUND: The Taiwan health authority recently launched several tuberculosis (TB) control interventions, which may have an impact on the epidemic of drug-resistant TB. We conducted a population-based antituberculosis drug resistance surveillance program in Eastern Taiwan to measure the proportions of notified TB patients with anti-TB drug resistance and the trend from 2004 to 2008. METHODS AND FINDINGS: All culture-positive TB patients were enrolled. Drug susceptibility testing results of the first isolate of each TB patient in each treatment course were analyzed. In total, 2688 patients were included, of which 2176 (81.0%) were new TB cases and 512 (19.0%) were previously treated cases. Among the 2176 new TB cases, 97 (4.5%) were retreated after the first episode of TB treatment within the study period. The proportion of new patients with any resistance, isoniazid resistance but not multidrug-resistant TB (resistant to at least isoniazid and rifampin, MDR-TB), and MDR-TB was 16.4%, 7.5%, and 4.0%, respectively, and that among previously treated cases was 30.9%, 7.9%, and 17.6%, respectively. The combined proportion of any resistance decreased from 23.3% in 2004 to 14.3% in 2008, and that of MDR-TB from 11.5% to 2.4%. CONCLUSIONS: The proportion of TB patients with drug-resistant TB in Eastern Taiwan remains substantial. However, an effective TB control program has successfully driven the proportion of drug resistance among TB patients downward