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Two novel cholestane-type steroidal saponins, melongoside R-S (1-2) and three novel furostanol-type steroidal saponins, melongoside T-V (3-5), together with three known steroidal saponins (6-8) were isolated from the seeds of Solanum melongna L. The structures of these compounds were elucidated by extensive spectroscopic analysis such as HR-ESI-MS, ESI-MS and NMR.

Automatic generation of reliefs from 3D objects has received great attention in the past few years. The existing methods, which have been developed for general relief generation, are not suitable to handle portrait models that have distinct geometrical features. In this paper, we present a novel method for portrait relief modeling which takes mesh deformation as the theoretical basis. In a pre-processing stage, we segment the input model into several meaningful regions so that different portrait regions could be separately processed. To emphasize visually important features, we further compute object saliency and apply normal enhancement. Once the projective direction is selected by users, the input object is transformed into a compressed height field, followed by a Laplacian-based mesh deformation to optimize the height field. The fine details, salient features and depth structures could be well constructed in the final relief. Experiments and comparisons with state-of-the-art methods demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

Spray cooling technology as a high heat flux cooling method is widely used to meet the increasingly cooling requirements, and the enhancement of spray cooling has gradually become a hot spot. In this study, three surfactants of AOS, CTAB and Tween20 with different concentrations were added into pure water to investigate their effects on spray cooling at low temperature range (≤100 °C) in a closed system. The three kinds of surfactants obviously improved the heat transfer performance, which had different optimum concentrations. The lowest mean surface temperature was obtained by CTAB with concentration of 200 ppm. The surface temperature non-uniformity of different surfactants spray was not improved, while the heat transfer deteriorated at high concentrations. In further study, the inclined mode method was used to alleviate the influence of bubble accumulation at high concentrations. The results showed that the inclined spray could significantly enhance the heat transfer capacity of the spray with surfactants and produce the optimum concentration point backward shift phenomenon. Moreover, the inclined spray mode showed a better promotion effect on spray cooling of surfactants with large surface tension.

Chinese calligraphy is one of the most representative art forms in China. Modeling Chinese calligraphy reliefs from 2D images has extensive application in art exhibitions and architectural decorations. Most existing approaches produce 3D-like effects of the calligraphy fonts, but lack flexible shape manipulation of the height field. The appearance of the resulting relief is thus limited. In this paper, we propose a mesh-based modeling system to generate Chinese calligraphy reliefs. Such a relief is constructed by combining a homogeneous height field and an inhomogeneous height field together via a nonlinear compression function. We provide several intuitive control parameters to allow users to interactively adjust the appearance of the relief. Experiments with a range of models show that the proposed approach is effective in producing stylized Chinese calligraphy reliefs.

Two new steroidal saponins, named timosaponin R (1) and S (2), together with seven known compounds (3-9) were isolated from the rhizomes of Anemarrhena asphodeloides Bge. Their structures were elucidated on the basis of NMR spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. All the compounds were evaluated for cytotoxic activities against the four human cancer cell lines MCF7, SW480, HepG2 and SGC7901 in vitro. Compounds 7-9 showed moderate activities against all the cell lines.

We introduce a normal-based modeling framework for bas-relief generation and stylization which is motivated by the recent advancement in this topic. Creating bas-relief from normal images has successfully facilitated bas-relief modeling in image space. However, the use of normal images in previous work is restricted to the cut-and-paste or blending operations of layers. These operations simply treat a normal vector as a pixel of a general color image. This paper is intended to extend normal-based methods by processing the normal image from a geometric perspective. Our method can not only generate a new normal image by combining various frequencies of existing normal images and details transferring, but also build bas-reliefs from a single RGB image and its edge-based sketch lines. In addition, we introduce an auxiliary function to represent a smooth base surface or generate a layered global shape. To integrate above considerations into our framework, we formulate the bas-relief generation as a variational problem which can be solved by a screened Poisson equation. One important advantage of our method is that it can generate more styles than previous methods and thus it expands the bas-relief shape space. We experimented our method on a range of normal images and it compares favorably to other popular classic and state-of-the-art methods.

Most previous methods of bas-relief generation run slow, or require tuning several important parameters. These issues seriously reduce the efficiency of bas-relief modeling. We introduce a fast generation method for high-quality bas-reliefs from 3D objects based on a deep learning technique. Unlike neural networks for image tasks, the proposed network for reliefs (ReliefNet) is elaborately designed to deal with a modeling problem in the field of graphics. We design our ReliefNet and equip it with a special loss function with the aim that the network can solve the essential problem of bas-relief modeling. Our network eliminates the height gaps and maintains the rich details simultaneously. The advantage over previous methods is that our method does not require parameter tuning and is a very efficient. Once the ReliefNet has been trained, a bas-relief can be produced by one feed-forward pass of the network instantly. To demonstrate the performance and effectiveness of our method, extensive experiments on a range of 3D scenes with high resolutions and comparisons to state-of-the-art methods are conducted.

Background: Ginsenosides are the major effective ingredients responsible for the pharmacological effects of ginseng. Malonyl ginsenosides are natural ginsenosides that contain a malonyl group attached to a glucose unit of the corresponding neutral ginsenosides. Methods: Medium-pressure liquid chromatography and semipreparative high-performance liquid chromatography were used to isolate purified compounds and their structures determined by extensive one-dimensional- and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) experiments. Results: A new saponin, namely malonyl-ginsenoside Re, was isolated from the fresh flower buds of Panax ginseng, along with malonyl-ginsenosides Rb1, Rb2, Rc, Rd. Some assignments for previously published 1H- and 13C-NMR spectra were found to be inaccurate. Conclusion: This study reports the complete NMR assignment of malonyl-ginsenoside Re, Rb1, Rb2, Rc, and Rd for the first time.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic role of Forkhead box A1 (FOXA1) in breast cancer and determine the relationship between FOXA1 and zinc finger of the cerebellum 1 (ZIC1). BCIP, GEPIA, and Oncomine databases were used to detect expression of FOXA1 and assess prognostic roles of FOXA1 and ZIC1 in invasive breast tumors. A total of 113 female invasive breast cancer cases were collected to investigate FOXA1 and ZIC1 expression via immunohistochemistry. Twenty pairs of frozen-thawed tumors were used to select reliable indicators via western blotting and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. In addition, Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox regression analysis were performed to analyze the overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival. Multiple databases showed that FOXA1 expression was elevated in invasive breast cancer and negatively related to ZIC1. BCIP database also displayed a poor prognosis of high FOXA1 and low ZIC1. FOXA1 was positively associated with tumor size, grading, lymph node metastasis, and Tumor Node Metastasis (TNM) staging, while ZIC1 expression was negatively related to grading, lymph node metastasis, and TNM staging. In Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analysis, FOXA1 negative group and ZIC1 positive group had better OS rate and recurrence-free survival rate. In addition, a joint evaluation showed that "FOXA1- ZIC1+" had the highest OS and relapse-free survival, but "FOXA1+ ZIC1-" had the lowest ones. FOXA1 was negatively related to ZIC1 in breast cancer and they had different roles in clinicopathology and prognosis. Combined examination of FOXA1 and ZIC1 could bring more benefit to breast cancer patients.

Traditional portrait bas-relief modeling methods are limited by the shape of the input 3D model. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to generate portrait bas-relief with various poses and expressions. In the alignment stage, we segment the input model into several meaningful regions so that the facial features of each region can be separately aligned. To guaranty the quality of expression simulation, we consider both the landmarks of fitted 3DMM model and input portrait image to drive the bi-Laplacian deformation process. After alignment, we apply normal enhancement in the deformed model, and the bas-relief is achieved by solving a sparse linear system in the normal field. Furthermore, the input model is transformed into a compressed height field to be the constraint in bas-relief modeling. The final bas-relief preserves the subtle details and depth structure. Experimental results demonstrate that our method is effective in generating the attractive appearance of portrait bas-reliefs.

Green manure shows promise for the relief of the environmental pressure caused by successive farming and excessive applications of fertilizers. Soil microbes play an important role in the decomposition of green manure. However, few studies focused on the relationship between the release of nutrients and bacterial community diversity when different rates of green manure are applied. The aim of this study was to evaluate the dynamic changes in soil bacterial communities and nutrient release during the decomposition of the green manure Italian ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum L.) residues in a new type Italian ryegrass-rice (Oryza sativa L.) rotation (IRR) system in South China. Six different rates (P0–P5) of Italian ryegrass were added to rice-growing red soil (Ferralic Cambisol) and allowed to decompose for 40 d (sampled every 10 d). Nutrient release and soil properties were determined during the decomposition and Illumina reads of the 16S rRNA gene amplicons were used to analyse changes in the bacterial communities. The addition of residues increased both nutrient concentrations (e.g., total nitrogen, available nitrogen and available potassium) and the relative abundance of microbes involved in nutrient cycling (e.g., Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Acidobacteria, and Gemmatimonadetes). Italian ryegrass residues had much faster rates of decomposition at 1–10 d, 11–20 d, and 21–30 d (from 183.2 to 238.1 g kg–1, on average) than that (45.6 g kg–1) at 31–40 d. Overall, the high green manure decomposition rates were accompanied by high similarities in bacterial community structures during decomposition. The nutrient cycle efficiency and bacterial community diversity were higher when the soils were treated with 40,170–44,895 kg ha–1 (P3–4) of green manure than other treatments. The average Shannon index values following the 44,895 kg ha–1 (P4) treatment were the highest among the different rates of residue application, and they were 6.42 at 10 d, 6.37 at 20 d, 6.29 at 30 d, and 6.53 at 40 d. The highest soil total nitrogen concentrations of 1.4–2.0 g kg–1 were obtained following the 40,170 kg ha–1 (P3) treatment, and seedling biomass increased the most under P3 treatment. In addition, soil total nitrogen and available potassium concentrations were significantly correlated with rice seedling biomass. This study demonstrates that the management of green manure application based on the IRR system facilitates rice growth by improving bacterial communities (composition and diversity) and soil fertility, and it provides a new perspective on the links between potential microbial community functions and organic agro-ecosystems.

One of the most critical issues in graphite exfoliation is realizing efficient, low-cost, eco-friendly, and scalable production of graphene for energy storage applications. The most promising strategies for exfoliating graphite to single-layer graphene sheets in scalable quantities with nearly non-oxidized content is the exfoliation of graphite by using an environmentally friendly solution. Herein, we demonstrate a universal exfoliation principle that uses imidazole, which has an anionic nature and π-conjugated heterocyclic coplanar structure, as the exfoliant for the successful production of large quantities of graphene suspensions in water. The exfoliant interacts with both surfaces of the exfoliated graphene sheets and the aqueous solution, significantly improving graphene dispersion (1 mg/mL) in water. Exfoliation in aqueous solutions produced graphene in high yield (>90%, ⩽3 layers), with a large lateral size (μm) and high quality ( I D / I G ratio ≈ 0.1). The electrical conductivity of the graphene paper is 131.7 S/cm, which is superior to the values reported from exfoliated graphene prepared using solution processes. An all-solid-state supercapacitor with a new design fabricated using the atomically thin and flat conductive exfoliated graphene sheets delivered an ultrahigh area capacitance (∼71.9 mF/cm 2 ). Therefore, imidazole -assisted exfoliation has great potential for scalable preparation of graphene suspensions for supercapacitor applications.

Phytochemical study of Orobanche cernua Loefling afforded 17 compounds, including eleven phenylpropanoid glycosides (1–11), two flavonoids (12, 13), one lignan (14), and three phenolic acids (15–17) were isolated from the fresh whole plant of O. cernua. Their structures were identified by spectroscopic analyses and by comparison of their spectral data with those reported in the literature. This is the first report of isolation of compounds (6, 8, 9, 11, 14–16) from O. cernua and compounds (14, 15) from the family Orobanchaceae, respectively. Compound 14 was obtained from natural source for the first time, the chemotaxonomic significance of these compounds was summarized.

A pair of new dibenz[cd,lm]perylene derivatives, juglanperylenone A (1a) and juglanperylenone B (1b), along with ten known compounds, including four anthraquinones (2–5), two coumarins (6–7) and four triterpenoids (8–11), were isolated from the stem bark of Juglans mandshurica Maxim. Their structures were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic evidence, including 1D and 2D NMR, HR-TOF-MS, and by comparison with literature data. In addition, the chemotaxonomic significance of the isolates was also discussed in this paper.

Sunken relief is an art form made by cutting the relief sculpture itself into a flat surface with a shallow overall depth. This paper focuses on the problem of direct generation of line-based sunken relief from a 3D mesh. We show how to extract, post-process and organize the messy feature lines in regular forms, applicable for lines engraving on the sculpture surfaces. We further describe how to construct a smooth height field from the input object, and derive a continuous pitting corrosion method to generate the cutting paths. The whole framework is conducted in object-space, making it flexible for stroke stylization and depth control of the engraving lines. We demonstrate the results with several impressive renderings and photographs used to illustrate the paper itself.

One new flavonoid, named ( R )-2-hydroxynaringenin ( 1 ), along with fifteen known compounds, including six flavonoids ( 2 – 7 ), six lignans ( 8 – 13 ), two phenolic glycosides ( 14 – 15 ) and one alkaloid ( 16 ) were isolated from the roots of Zizyphus jujuba Mill. var. spinosa (Bunge) Hu ex H. F. Chou. Their structures were established on the basis of spectroscopic evidence, including 1D and 2D NMR, circular dichroism (CD) curve analysis, and by comparison with literature data. Compounds 2 , 3 and 8 – 16 were found in Z . jujuba Mill. var. spinosa for the first time, while compounds 8 , 10 and 13 – 15 were new to the Rhamnaceae family. In addition, the chemotaxonomic significance of the isolates was discussed in this paper.

A reversed phase high performance liquid chromatography method coupled with a diode array detector (HPLC-DAD) was developed for the first time for the simultaneous determination of 9 flavonoids in Senecio cannabifolius, a traditional Chinese medicinal herb. Agilent Zorbax SB-C18 column was used at room temperature and the mobile phase was a mixture of acetonitrile and 0.5% formic acid (v/v) in water in the gradient elution mode at a flow-rate of 1.0mlmin(-1), detected at 360nm. Validation of this method was performed to verify the linearity, precision, limits of detection and quantification, intra- and inter-day variabilities, reproducibility and recovery. The calibration curves showed good linearities (R(2)>0.9995) within the test ranges. The relative standard deviation (RSD) of the method was less than 3.0% for intra- and inter-day assays. The samples were stable for at least 96h, and the average recoveries were between 90.6% and 102.5%. High sensitivity was demonstrated with detection limits of 0.028-0.085μg/ml for flavonoids. The newly established HPLC method represents a powerful technique for the quality assurance of S. cannabifolius.

Due to the increasing incidence of cancer, a leading cause of death worldwide, discovery of new therapeutic drugs is urgently needed. By screening for agents with low toxicity that selectively target cancer cells, we found that 6-[(1-naphthylmethyl) sulfanyl]-9H-purine (NMMP), a derivative of 6-mercaptopurine (6-MP), could reduce the viability of five human cancer cell lines. Further study suggested that NMMP inhibition of the proliferation of hepatocellular carcinoma (HepG2) cells was associated with G2/M phase cell cycle arrest, and reduced cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) 4 and cyclin B1/D1 levels. In addition, NMMP induced cell apoptosis, as determined by TUNEL assay. Immunoblot analysis revealed that the expression of cleaved caspase-9 and caspase-3 as well as the ratio of Bax/Bcl-2 protein increased significantly. Overall, our results suggest that NMMP exerts anti-tumor activities through induction of G2/M phase arrest and mitochondria-dependent cell apoptosis, implicating its potential therapeutic value for the treatment of cancer.

The high biological activity of dehydroabietylamine derivatives has been reported previously. In this study, we aimed to screen 73 dehydroabietylamine derivatives as potential candidate inhibitors in liver cancer cells. Initially, the compounds structural activity relationship analysis was explored and N-benzoyl-12-nitrodehydroabietylamine-7-one (compound 81) was shown to have significant growth inhibitory activity in the human liver carcinoma cell line, HepG2. Further research into the anti-proliferative effect on HepG2 cells mediated by compound 81 was undertaken. The results suggest that compound 81 effectively induced apoptosis in HepG2 cells characterized by nuclear staining of DAPI, TUNEL assay and the activation of caspase-3. A decreased level of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2 and increased apoptotic Bax were also observed. Furthermore, Ki-67 protein staining and the BrdU incorporation assay showed that compound 81 significantly inhibited the proliferation of HepG2 cells. Cell cycle components analysis found that expression of cyclin D1 and cyclin B1 was reduced in HepG2 cells with compound 81 treatment, whereas the content of p21(Waf1/Cip1) was increased. Taken together, our data indicate that compound 81 induces apoptosis and inhibits proliferation in HepG2 cells, and may be a promising candidate in the development of a novel class of antitumor agents.

Pancreatic β and α cells play essential roles in maintaining glucose homeostasis. However, the mechanisms by which these distinct cell populations are generated, expand, and mature during pancreas development remain unclear. In this study, we addressed this critical question by performing a single-cell transcriptomic analysis of mouse β and α cells sorted from fetal to adult stages. We discovered that β and α cells use different regulatory strategies for their maturation and that cell proliferation peaks at different developmental times. However, the quiescent and proliferative cells in both the β lineage and α lineage are synchronous in their maturation states. The heterogeneity of juvenile β cells reflects distinct cell-cycling phases, origins, and maturation states, whereas adult β cells are relatively homogeneous at the transcriptomic level. These analyses provide not only a high-resolution roadmap for islet lineage development but also insights into the mechanisms of cellular heterogeneity, cell number expansion, and maturation of both β and α cells.