An investigation of the pharmacological effects of Nao Xin Qing (NXQ), a standardised herbal extract, for ischaemic stroke : in vitro and in vivo

Stroke is one of the major causes of death and disability worldwide. Ischaemic stroke constitutes 80% of stroke incidents. Reperfusion injury following ischaemic stroke has been shown to contribute to major neurological damages. Current conventional treatments for ischaemic stroke, whether surgical or pharmaceutical, focus on restoring cerebral blood flow and preventing expansion of ischaemic damage, but have limited impact on neuron damage or restoring damaged neurological functionalities. Nao Xin Qing (NXQ), a standardised, patented herbal extract derived from Diospyros kaki L., offers potential therapeutic for apoplexy syndrome, including ischaemic stroke. However, NXQ’s effects on ischaemic stroke are unclear. In particular, the mechanisms underlying NXQ’s effects and the key active components responsible for these effects, are not fully understood. This study aims to determine the effects of NXQ and its role in the treatment of ischaemic stroke. The study comprised of two parts. First part to determine the effects of NXQ for ischaemic stroke by evaluating its vascular protective effects and angiogenic effects. This study further identifies the chemical profiles of the NXQ extract and determines which compound/s are responsible for the therapeutic functions for ischaemic stroke. The second part of the study aimed to evaluate the clinical effects of NXQ on ischaemic stroke patients. A study protocol for a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was developed to facilitate future studies on the clinical efficacy and safety profile of NXQ for ischaemic stroke patients. NXQ possesses vascular protective effects against H2O2-induced damage that may protect endothelial cells from reperfusion-induced damage. Additionally, NXQ possesses potential angiogenesis and revascularisation properties, which may contribute to its therapeutic action during ischaemic stroke recovery

Chiral Koszul duality

We extend the theory of chiral and factorization algebras, developed for curves by Beilinson and Drinfeld in \cite{bd}, to higher-dimensional varieties. This extension entails the development of the homotopy theory of chiral and factorization structures, in a sense analogous to Quillen's homotopy theory of differential graded Lie algebras. We prove the equivalence of higher-dimensional chiral and factorization algebras by embedding factorization algebras into a larger category of chiral commutative coalgebras, then realizing this interrelation as a chiral form of Koszul duality. We apply these techniques to rederive some fundamental results of \cite{bd} on chiral enveloping algebras of $\star$-Lie algebras

Protein Sequencing with an Adaptive Genetic Algorithm from Tandem Mass Spectrometry

In Proteomics, only the de novo peptide sequencing approach allows a partial amino acid sequence of a peptide to be found from a MS/MS spectrum. In this article a preliminary work is presented to discover a complete protein sequence from spectral data (MS and MS/MS spectra). For the moment, our approach only uses MS spectra. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) has been designed with a new evaluation function which works directly with a complete MS spectrum as input and not with a mass list like the other methods using this kind of data. Thus the mono isotopic peak extraction step which needs a human intervention is deleted. The goal of this approach is to discover the sequence of unknown proteins and to allow a better understanding of the differences between experimental proteins and proteins from databases

Spin(7)-instantons, Cayley submanifolds, and Fueter sections

We prove an existence theorem for Spin(7)-instantons, which are highly concentrated near a Cayley submanifold; thus giving a partial converse to Tian's foundational compactness theorem. As an application, we show how to construct Spin(7)-instantons on Spin(7)-manifolds with suitable local K3 Cayley fibrations. This recovers an example constructed by Lewis.Comment: v3: published version. Section 3 draws heavily from a corresponding section in arXiv:1205.535

Specious rules: an efficient and effective unifying method for removing misleading and uninformative patterns in association rule mining

We present theoretical analysis and a suite of tests and procedures for addressing a broad class of redundant and misleading association rules we call \emph{specious rules}. Specious dependencies, also known as \emph{spurious}, \emph{apparent}, or \emph{illusory associations}, refer to a well-known phenomenon where marginal dependencies are merely products of interactions with other variables and disappear when conditioned on those variables. The most extreme example is Yule-Simpson's paradox where two variables present positive dependence in the marginal contingency table but negative in all partial tables defined by different levels of a confounding factor. It is accepted wisdom that in data of any nontrivial dimensionality it is infeasible to control for all of the exponentially many possible confounds of this nature. In this paper, we consider the problem of specious dependencies in the context of statistical association rule mining. We define specious rules and show they offer a unifying framework which covers many types of previously proposed redundant or misleading association rules. After theoretical analysis, we introduce practical algorithms for detecting and pruning out specious association rules efficiently under many key goodness measures, including mutual information and exact hypergeometric probabilities. We demonstrate that the procedure greatly reduces the number of associations discovered, providing an elegant and effective solution to the problem of association mining discovering large numbers of misleading and redundant rules.Comment: Note: This is a corrected version of the paper published in SDM'17. In the equation on page 4, the range of the sum has been correcte

An ab-initio approach to describe coherent and non-coherent exciton dynamics

The use of ultra-short laser pulses to pump and probe materials activates a wealth of processes which involve the coherent and non coherent dynamics of interacting electrons out of equilibrium. Non equilibrium (NEQ) many body perturbation theory (MBPT) offers an equation of motion for the density-matrix of the system which well describes both coherent and non coherent processes. In the non correlated case there is a clear relation between these two regimes and the matrix elements of the density-matrix. The same is not true for the correlated case, where the potential binding of electrons and holes in excitonic states need to be considered. In the present work we discuss how NEQ-MBPT can be used to describe the dynamics of both coherent and non-coherent excitons in the low density regime. The approach presented is well suited for an ab initio implementation