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Osteosarcoma (OS), the most prevalent bone malignancy, mainly affects children and adolescents. Despite recent advances in multimodal therapy, the overall survival rate for OS patients remains poor. Chinese herb medicine (CHM) is an alternative therapeutic option for multifaceted diseases such as malignant tumors. For centuries in China, polygonum cuspidatum, a classic CHM, has been used to treat several diseases, nevertheless, the mechanisms underlying its therapeutic effects have not been fully elucidated. Through network pharmacology and bioinformatic tools, we evaluated the pharmacological activity of polygonum cuspidatum. We found that it has a potential therapeutic effect on malignant tumors, which was subsequently verified by intragastric administration of polygonum cuspidatum to OS cell xenografted mice models. Next, to establish the action mechanism of polygonum cuspidatum, we built a disease/drug-target PPI network that was made up of 250 core treatment targets against OS using Cytoscape software. Enrichment evaluation for the above targets indicated that polygonum cuspidatum may exert its effects on the cell cycle and apoptosis of OS cells through inhibiting Akt/ERK/EGFR pathways. Finally, the above in silico results were experimentally validated via a series of molecular biological and cell functional analyses. Taken together, the findings show that polygonum cuspidatum has a significant potential for OS treatment, which provides a novel insight into the discovery of CHM-based drug against malignancies. Abbreviations CC: Closeness centrality; OS: Osteosarcoma; TCM: Traditional Chinese medicine; NSCLC: Non-small cell lung cancer; DC: Degree centrality; CHM: Chinese herb medicine; BC: Betweenness centrality

In this paper, we present a density-functional theory with a particle swarm optimisation algorithm to research the progress of the ligand effects of the gold (Au) structures and growth proc...

Ligand-protected gold clusters are widely used in biosensors and catalysis. Understanding the structural evolution of these kinds of nanoclusters is important for experimental synthesis. Herein, ba...

Reshaping of a Gaussian laser beam into a uniform or other intensity distribution is required for various applications. The laser beam shaping system with a radial birefringent filter is presented in this paper. With such a system the Gaussian beams can be transformed into uniform or annular beams. The theory and simulation of the proposed systems are described in detail. The primary advantage of such a system is that the out beam profile can be tunable with the rotation of the radial birefringent element.

The diffraction properties of volume holographic gratings are studied when the gratings are illuminated by an ultrashort pulsed beam with different polarization states. The developed coupled wave theory of Kogelnik is used. Considering the dispersion effect of the grating media, solutions for the diffracted and transmitted intensities, diffraction efficiencies and the bandwidths of the gratings are given in transmission volume holographic gratings and reflection volume holographic gratings. The bandwidths of the gratings are reduced by the dispersion effect of the grating media. They also have different influences on the diffraction of an ultrashort pulsed beam with different polarization states. For different values of the ratio of the spectral bandwidth of the input pulse to that of the grating, the changes of the spectral and temporal distributions of the diffracted intensities, as well as the diffraction efficiencies of the gratings are shown.

A nonvolatile recording scheme is proposed using LiNbO3:Ce:Cu crystals and modulated UV light to record gratings simultaneously in two centres and using red light to bleach the grating in the shallow centre to realize persistent photorefractive holographic storage. Compared with the normal UV-sensitized nonvolatile holographic system, the amplitude of refractive-index changes is greatly increased and the recording sensitivity is significantly enhanced by recording with UV light in the LiNbO3:Ce:Cu crystals. Based on jointly solving the two-centre material equations and the coupled-wave equations, temporal evolutions of the photorefractive grating and the diffraction efficiency are effectively described and numerically analysed. Roles of doping levels and recording-beam intensity are discussed in detail. Theoretical results confirm and predict experimental results.

In this paper is described a novel technique for producing an electro-optical intensity synthesizer which can generate different periodic time domain waveforms through only sine or cosine wave applied-voltages. The synthesizer presented here consists of a series of stages between two polarizers, with each stage consisting of an electro-optic element and a compensator. Every electro-optical element has the same applied-voltage function but different azimuth angles and ratios between the longitudinal and transverse lengths. The main principle is the synthesis of an electro-optic effect and a polarization interference effect in the time domain. This technique is based on an expanded Fourier positive-direction searching algorithm, which can not only simplify the calculation process but also produces many choices of structural parameters for different waveforms generation. A three-stage synthesis of an electro-optical birefringent system for continuous square waveform is undertaken to prove the principle.

The general formulation of double refraction or internal double reflection for any directions of incidence and arbitrary orientation of the optic axis in a uniaxial crystal is analysed in terms of Huygens' principle. Then double refraction and double reflection along the sequential interfaces in a crystal are discussed. On this basis, if the parameters of the interface are chosen appropriately, the range of angular separation between the ordinary ray and extraordinary ray can be much greater, It is useful for crystal element design. Finally, as an example, an optimum design of the Output end interface for a 2 x 2 electro-optic switch is given.

A new method to produce flattening spectral transmittance for a birefringent interleaver filter based on the interference of polarized light is presented. In previous publications, each birefringent crystal was required to be of equal thickness and only one group of crystal azimuth angles was obtained. In addition, the shape of the spectral transmittance was not sufficiently flat and the flatness width of the passband and stopband was not sufficiently wide. The proposed method has advantages over previously published methods. It is based on the Fourier transform, and the thickness of each crystal can be different. All numerical solutions can be obtained for crystal azimuth angles provided ripples are small in relation to the relatively wide passband and the stopband. Three birefringent crystals are used and all the azimuth angles of the crystals are obtained when ripples are limited to a uniform 0.1% in both the passband and stopband, with widths greater than 2/11 of the period. The influence of ...

The general formulation of double refraction or internal double reflection with different directions of propagation vector and wave vector in a uniaxial crystal is analysed in terms of Huygens' principle. Then double refraction and double reflection along the sequential interfaces in a crystal are discussed. On this basis, a configuration of electro-optic 1 x N optical switch with modulators and birefringent crystal slabs integrated in a single block of crystal is suggested, which is simple and compact in construction, low in loss and insensitive to environment. Finally, calculations are given which lead to a proposed design of a 1 × 4 switch.

The photorefractive holographic recording is a dynamic grating formulation process, where the grating is induced by the interference modulation of two beams, and the energies of the beams are exchanged with each other owing to their interaction in the induced grating. The grating modulation envelope is a comprehensive analysis for holographic dynamic recording and non-destructive readout, but analytic solutions can only be obtained by simultaneously solving the materials equations and the coupled wave equations. In this paper, based on Kukhtarev's model and Moharam's field function exact steady-state analytic expressions for dynamic grating envelopes are deduced for any constant values of light modulation depth and light excitation efficiency. Thus their approximations for straight formulation instead of parametric formulation are then obtained. These steady-state analytic solutions to envelopes describe the dynamic holographic recording and readout more clearly and exactly.

A new type of anisotropic scattering ring and the isotropic scattering oscillation are observed on a screen behind a Cu:KNSBN crystal pumped by an extraordinary beam. The latter plays a key role in the forming of the former.

We demonstrate a scheme of reconfigurable optical interconnections using angular multiple holograms in a photorefractive medium. The conjugation light paths of three regular interconnect configurations are stored and fixed. Real-time two-wave mixing with the forward read-out technique combined with a special optical imaging system is employed to achieve the incident angle of the input beam as changeable but the position has no shift. Issues about ability of reconfiguration, cross-over and energy efficiency are discussed theoretically. A proof-of-principle experiment is also presented.

In a volume phase hologram recorded by two-beam coupling in photorefractive crystal, the refractive index modulation and the phase shift are both path dependent. In this paper, the concept of dividing the crystal slab into layers together with the mathematics of the diagonalization matrix are developed to calculate the diffraction of the hologram. As a result, a general analytic solution is achieved. For the use of novelty filtering in image processing and interferometric measurement, the conditions for keeping the same fields of the reconstructed signal beam and the transmitted signal beam are discussed.

Based on the partially coherent effect that lies between the Talbot effect and the Lau effect, a novel type of interferometry is proposed in this paper for a general configuration. The resultant interferogram is characterized by two different grating-like carriers. Such an interferometer becomes a Talbot or a Lau interferometer by adjusting the source slit to one or other of the two extremes of coherence. The partially coherent effect and the performance of the interferometer are analysed in detail in terms of the ambiguity function. Experimental results are shown to be in good agreement with the predicted intensity distributions.