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In this paper, a review is conducted on the working mechanisms of acupuncture treatment of ischemic stroke. Acupuncture affects the recovery from stroke on many levels, including the cellular and molecular level, as well as many other factors. By increasing cerebral blood flow and energy metabolism, enhancing the ability of brain tissue recovery from oxidative damage, reducing the inflammatory response within brain tissues, adjusting neuro-biochemical reactions, influencing neurotransmitter release, and impacting activation of astrocytes, etc., acupuncture can improve symptoms related to ischemic stroke and aid recovery of neurological function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-referential emotion refers to the process of evaluating emotional stimuli with respect to the self. Processes indicative of a self-positivity bias are reflected in electroencephalogram (EEG) signals at ~400 ms when the task does not require a discrimination of self from other. However, when distinguishing between self-referential and other-referential emotions is required, previous studies have shown inconsistent temporal dynamics of EEG signals in slightly different tasks. Based on the observation of early self-other discrimination, we hypothesized that self would be rapidly activated in the early stage to modulate emotional processinginthelatestageduringanimplicit self-referentialemotion. To test thishypothesis, weemployed an implicit task in which participants were asked to judge the order of Chinese characters of trait adjectives preceded by a self ("I") or other pronoun ("He" or "She"). This study aimed to explore the difference of social-related emotional evaluation from self-reference; the other pronoun was not defined to a specific person, rather it referred to the general concept. Sixteen healthy Chinese subjects participated in the experiment. Event-related potentials (ERPs) showed that there were self-other discrimination effects in the N1 (80-110 ms) and P1 (170-200 ms) components in the anterior brain. The emotional valence was discriminated in the later component of N2 (220-250 ms). The interaction between self-reference and emotional valence occurred during the late positive potential (LPP; 400-500 ms). Moreover, there was a positive correlation between response time (RT) andN1in the self-referenceconditionbasedonthe positive-negative contrast, suggestinga modulatory effect of the self-positivity bias. The results indicate that self-reference emerges earlier than emotion and then combines with emotional processing in an implicit task. The findings extend the view that the self plays a highly integrated and modulated role in self-referential emotion processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The upregulation of bone morphogenetic protein and activin membrane-bound inhibitor (BAMBI) has been observed in several types of malignant cancer, including thyroid, ovarian, liver and colorectal cancer. However, the pathological role and the regulatory mechanism of BAMBI in gastric cancer remain to be elucidated. The present study revealed that the expression of BAMBI was upregulated in gastric cancer tissue, and was correlated with tumor metastasis, disease recurrence and low survival rates in patients. Knockdown of BAMBI in aggressive gastric cancer cell lines significantly inhibited their malignant behavior, including in vitro invasion and cell proliferation. β-catenin expression was downregulated as a result of knocking down of BAMBI, and TGF-β was downregulated in a similar manner. These results demonstrated the association between BAMBI expression and gastric cancer progression, and indicate a promising direction for developing novel strategies to improve the prognosis and therapy of gastric cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  Two DREB-like genes, designated as DmDREBa and DmDREBb, were isolated from chrysanthemum by RACE approach. The DmDREBa and DmDREBb genes encoded proteins of 191 and 185 amino acid residues with the predicted molecular mass of 21.66 and 20.99 kDa, respectively. Both DmDREBs proteins comprised a typical EREBP/AP2 domain, a DREB1-type nuclear localization signal (NLS) before the EREBP/AP2 domain and a DSAWR sequence after the domain. Phylogenetic analysis suggested that both DmDREBs were attributable to the DREB1 subgroup. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis revealed that both genes were accumulated more in leaves and stems than in roots and flowers. Moreover, DmDREBb reacted earlier and accumulated with higher levels than DmDREBa under cold treatment. Expression of DmDREBa and DmDREBb declined dramatically within 0.5 h of exposure to 100 μM ABA. Besides, DmDREBb expression was variable and recovered to pre-ABA levels at 2, 6 and 12 h, while DmDREBa expression remained low during the 24 h exposure period. Furthermore, both genes expression was totally inhibited at 40°C. In addition, these two DmDREB proteins were also found to have transcriptional activity and had the DRE-binding capacity as shown by yeast one-hybrid system and were localized to the nuclei of cells. To our knowledge, this is the first report on isolation of DREB-like genes in chrysanthemum. This study showed that DmDREBs may play a regulatory role in abiotic stress responses and provided evidence of differences in the timing and level of expression between two homologous genes in plants under abiotic stress conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dehydration responsive element binding (DREB) proteins are important transcription factors in plant stress response and signal transduction. In this study, a DREB homolog gene, DvDREB2A, was isolated from chrysanthemum ( Dendranthema vestitum) by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and rapid amplification of cDNA ends (RACE) methods. It contained an open reading frame (ORF) of 1,471 bp encoding 366 amino acid residues and was classified as a DREB2 subfamily member based on multiple sequence alignment. The predicted protein sequence contained a typical AP2/EREBP DNA-binding domain near the N-terminal region. In yeast one-hybrid analysis DvDREB2A protein was specifically bound to DRE elements (core sequence, A/GCCGAC) and activated the expression of the reporter HIS3 and LacZ. Transient expression experiment suggested that DvDREB2A protein was localized to the nucleus of onion epidermis cells. Quantitative real-time PCR (QRT-PCR) experiments showed that expression level of DvDREB2A was significantly affected by heat, low temperature, drought, abscisic acid (ABA) and high salinity treatments. These results indicated that the DvDREB2A gene is a new member of the DREB transcription factors, which may play an important role in providing tolerance to environmental stresses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fast growth of aligned ZnO nanowire arrays with optimized structure is attractive for electrical and optical devices. In this paper, we report a controllable and rapid growth of ZnO nanowire arrays by a microwave-assisted hydrothermal method. When using different zinc salts as the precursors, the morphology of the samples changes a lot and the length growth rate is several times different. The growth mechanism is also investigated. It is found that the solution near neutral pH value is ideal for fast nanowire growth, in which the length of the nanowires increases linearly with growth time and the growth rate is over ten times faster than that in the traditional hydrothermal method. Therefore, aligned ZnO nanowire arrays can grow up to tens of microns in a few hours, while the density and sizes of these nanowires can be well controlled. The ZnO nanowire arrays used as photocatalysts present good photocatalytic performance to the degradation of methyl orange (MO) due to the large surface area. So this paper provides an effective method to obtain vertically aligned ZnO nanowire arrays for practical applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]