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The interaction between environmental stressors, such as cold exposure, and immune function significantly impacts human health. Research on effective therapeutic strategies to combat cold-induced immunosuppression is limited, despite its importance. In this study, we aim to investigate whether traditional herbal medicine can counteract cold-induced immunosuppression. We previously demonstrated that cold exposure elevated immunoglobulin G (IgG) levels in mice, similar to the effects of intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) treatments. This cold-induced rise in circulating IgG was mediated by the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system and linked to vascular constriction. In our mouse model, the cold-exposed groups (4 °C) showed significantly elevated plasma IgG levels and reduced bacterial clearance compared with the control groups maintained at room temperature (25 °C), both indicative of immunosuppression. Using this model, with 234 mice divided into groups of 6, we investigated the potential of tanshinone IIA, an active compound in Salvia miltiorrhiza ethanolic root extract (SMERE), in alleviating cold-induced immunosuppression. Tanshinone IIA and SMERE treatments effectively normalized elevated plasma IgG levels and significantly improved bacterial clearance impaired by cold exposure compared with control groups injected with a vehicle control, dimethyl sulfoxide. Notably, bacterial clearance, which was impaired by cold exposure, showed an approximately 50% improvement following treatment, restoring immune function to levels comparable to those observed under normal temperature conditions (25 °C, p < 0.05). These findings highlight the therapeutic potential of traditional herbal medicine in counteracting cold-induced immune dysregulation, offering valuable insights for future strategies aimed at modulating immune function in cold environments. Further research could focus on isolating tanshinone IIA and compounds present in SMERE to evaluate their specific roles in mitigating cold-induced immunosuppression.

In order to study the explosion suppression characteristics of LPG/air mixture by CO2 synergistic inert powder, explosion suppression experiments were conducted in a 20 L explosion device. The results show that the explosion suppression effect of NaHCO3 powder is prior to Al(OH)3 powder under the condition of no CO2 synergy. As the mass concentration of inert powder increases, the peak value of explosion pressure Pex and the peak value of the pressure rise rate (dP/dt)ex decrease, and the explosion suppression effect gradually enhances. Gas–solid two-phase inhibitors exhibit more significant inhibitory effects than single-phase inhibitors. Increasing the volume fraction of CO2 or the mass concentration of inert powder can improve the explosion suppression effect. The explosion suppression effect of CO2/NaHCO3 is significantly better than that of CO2/Al(OH)3. The research results have certain significance for the prevention and control of LPG explosion accidents.

The primary visual cortex (V1) is one of the most studied regions of the brain and is characterized by its specialized and laminated layer 4 in human and non-human primates. However, studies aiming to harmonize the definition of the cortical layers and borders of V1 across rodents and primates are very limited. This article attempts to identify and harmonize the molecular markers and connectional patterns that can consistently link corresponding cortical layers of V1 and borders across mammalian species and ages. V1 in primates has at least two additional and unique layers (L3b2 and L3c) and two sublayers of layer 4 (L4a and L4b) compared to rodent V1. In all species examined, layers 4 and 3b of V1 receive strong inputs from the (dorsal) lateral geniculate nucleus, and V1 is mostly surrounded by the secondary visual cortex except for one location where V1 directly abuts area prostriata. The borders of primate V1 can also be clearly identified at mid-gestational ages using gene markers. In rodents, a novel posteromedial extension of V1 is identified, which expresses V1 marker genes and receives strong inputs from the lateral geniculate nucleus. This V1 extension was labeled as the posterior retrosplenial cortex and medial secondary visual cortex in the literature and brain atlases. Layer 6 of the rodent and primate V1 originates corticothalamic projections to the lateral geniculate, lateral dorsal, and reticular thalamic nuclei and the lateroposterior–pulvinar complex with topographic organization. Finally, the direct geniculo-extrastriate (particularly the strong geniculo-prostriata) projections are probably major contributors to blindsight after V1 lesions. Taken together, compared to rodents, primates, and humans, V1 has at least two unique middle layers, while other layers are comparable across species and display conserved molecular markers and similar connections with the visual thalamus with only subtle differences.

Tracking the articulated poses of multiple individuals in complex videos is a highly challenging task due to a variety of factors that compromise the accuracy of estimation and tracking. Existing frameworks often rely on intricate propagation strategies and extensive exchange of flow data between video frames. In this context, we propose a spatiotemporal sampling framework that addresses the degradation of frames at the feature level, offering a simple yet effective network block. Our spatiotemporal sampling mechanism empowers the framework to extract meaningful features from neighboring video frames, thereby optimizing the accuracy of pose detection in the current frame. This approach results in significant improvements in running latency. When evaluated on the COCO dataset and the mixed dataset, our approach outperforms other methods in terms of average precision (AP), recall rate (AR), and acceleration ratio. Specifically, we achieve a 3.7% increase in AP, a 1.77% increase in AR, and a speedup of 1.51 times compared to mainstream state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods. Furthermore, when evaluated on the PoseTrack2018 dataset, our approach demonstrates superior accuracy in multi-object tracking, as measured by the multi-object tracking accuracy (MOTA) metric. Our method achieves an impressive 11.7% increase in MOTA compared to the prevailing SOTA methods.

Wild soybean (Glycine soja L.), drought-tolerant cultivar Tiefeng 31 (Glycine max L.), and drought-sensitive cultivar Fendou 93 (Glycine max L.) were used as materials to investigate the drought tolerance mechanism after 72 h 2.5 M PEG 8000 (osmotic potential −0.54 MPa)-simulated drought stress at the seedling stage. The results indicated that the leaves of the G. soja did not wilt under drought stress. However, both the drought-tolerant and drought-sensitive cultivated soybean cultivars experienced varying degrees of leaf wilt. Notably, the drought-sensitive cultivated soybean cultivars exhibited severe leaf wilt after the drought stress. Drought stress was determined to have a significant impact on the dry matter of the above-ground part of the drought-sensitive cultivar Fendou 93, followed by the drought-tolerant cultivar Tiefeng 31, with the lowest reduction observed in G. soja. Furthermore, the presence of drought stress resulted in the closure of leaf stomata. G. soja exhibited the highest proportion of stomatal opening per unit area, followed by the drought-tolerant cultivar Tiefeng 31, while the drought-sensitive cultivar Fendou 93 displayed the lowest percentage. Photosynthesis-related indexes, including photosynthetic rate, intercellular CO2, transpiration rate, and stomatal conductance, decreased in Fendou 93 and Tiefeng 31 after drought stress, but increased in G. soja. In terms of the antioxidant scavenging system, lower accumulation of malondialdehyde (MDA) was observed in G. soja and Tiefeng 31, along with higher activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD, EC 1.15.1.1) and catalase (CAT, EC 1.11.1.6) to counteract excess reactive oxygen species and maintain cell membrane integrity. In contrast, the drought-sensitive cultivar Fendou 93 had higher MDA content and higher activities of ascorbate peroxidase (APX, EC 1.11.1.11) and peroxidase (POD, 1.11.1.7). G. soja and Tiefeng 31 also exhibited less accumulation of osmolytes, including soluble sugar, soluble protein, and free proline content. The activities of δ-OAT, ProDH, and P5CS, key enzymes in proline anabolism, showed an initial increase under drought stress, followed by a decrease, and then an increase again at the end of drought stress in G. soja. Before drought stress, Tiefeng 31 had higher activities of ProDH and P5CS, which decreased with prolonged drought stress. Fendou 93 experienced an increase in the activities of δ-OAT, ProDH, and P5CS under drought stress. The δ-OAT gene expression levels were up-regulated in all three germplasms. The expression levels of the P5CS gene in Fendou 93 and Tiefeng 31 were down-regulated, while G. soja showed no significant change. The expression of the P5CR gene and ProDH gene was down-regulated in Fendou 93 and Tiefeng 31, but up-regulated in G. soja. This indicates that proline content is regulated at both the transcription and translation levels.

In this paper, local and nonlocal reductions of two nonisospectral Ablowitz-Kaup-Newell-Segur equations, the third order nonisospectral AKNS equation and the negative order nonisospectral AKNS equation, are studied. By imposing constraint conditions on the double Wronskian solutions of the aforesaid nonisospectral AKNS equations, various solutions for the local and nonlocal nonisospectral modified Korteweg-de Vries equation and local and nonlocal nonisospectral sine-Gordon equation are derived, including soliton solutions and Jordan block solutions. Dynamics of some obtained solutions are analyzed and illustrated by asymptotic analysis.

Cardenolides with special chemical structures have been considered as effective anti-cancer drugs in clinic trials. Strophalloside is a cardenolide we recently isolated from Antiaris toxicaria obtained from Hainan, China. The aim of this study was to investigate the possible anticancer effects induced by strophalloside and the underlying molecular mechanism. Gastric carcinoma SGC-7901 cells were treated with strophalloside at various concentrations for different times, and resulting cell viability was determined by the MTT assay, and the motility and invasion of tumor cells were assessed by the Transwell chamber assay. Apoptosis were measured by Annexin V-FITC/PI and Hoechst staining. The changes of mitochondrial transmembrane potential were examined by a JC-1 kit. The expressions of pro-apoptotic protein cytochrome c, caspase-3 and caspase-9 were detected by western blotting analysis. The results showed that strophalloside was capable of reducing cell viability, inhibiting cell growth, and suppressing cell migration and invasion in a time- and dose-dependent manner. Mitochondrial membrane potential declined and the concentration of cytochrome c increased in cytoplasm and caspase-3 and caspase-9 were cleaved into activated states, suggesting that cytochrome c was released from the mitochondrion to cytoplasm and finally activated the caspase-dependent apoptosis pathway. Our results indicate that strophalloside is a potential anticancer drug.

In the present study, an ultra-high performance liquid chromatography coupled with quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry (UHPLC-QTOF-MS) method for simultaneous determination of eleven original, fourteen degraded ginsenosides and five aglycones was developed and validated to quantitatively evaluate the transformation of ginsenosides during preparation of Du-Shen-Tang, the decoction of ginseng. Both positive and negative modes as well as the step wave ion transfer optics technology were used to increase the detection sensitivity of QTOF-MS. The extracting ion mode based on the quasi-molecular ions, molecular ions and fragment ions characteristic to each analyte was used to increase the selectivity for quantitative analysis. Under the optimized UHPLC and QTOF-MS conditions, the 30 analytes with different polarities were separated (except for Re and Rg1) within 26 min. The developed method was applied for the quantitative comparison of Du-Shen-Tang and its raw materials derived from Asian ginseng (ASG) and American ginseng (AMG), respectively. It was found that the contents of the original ginsenosides decreased from 26,053.09 to 19,393.29 μg/g or 45,027.72 to 41,865.39 μg/g, whereas the degraded ginsenosides and aglycones increased from 159.72 to 685.37 μg/g or 676.54 to 1,502.26 μg/g in Du-Shen-Tang samples of ASG or AMG when compared with their raw materials, indicating that decocting could dramatically increase the proportion of the less polar degraded ginsenosides in Du-Shen-Tang. Whether these changed proportions of different polar ginsenosides could affect the bioactivities of the decoctions and their raw materials derived from ASG and AMG deserves further investigation.

Detection of sulfur-fumigated Paeoniae Alba Radix (PAR) in different complex preparations is challenging due to the relatively lower content of PAR and interference from more complicated components in complex preparations with different multiple constituent herbs. In this study, a high performance liquid chromatography- triple-quadrupole tandem mass spectrometry method was developed for detecting sulfur-fumigated PAR in different complex preparations. Paeoniflorin, the major component of PAR, and paeoniflorin sulfonate, the characteristic artifact transformed from paeoniflorin during sulfur-fumigation of PAR, were used as chemical markers. Multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) scan was employed to maximize sensitivity and selectivity. Through optimizing full mass scan and daughter ion scan conditions, two mass transitions were selected and employed respectively for unequivocal identification of paeoniflorin and paeoniflorin sulfonate. The detection limits for paeoniflorin and paeoniflorin sulfonate using MRM were much lower than those detected with UV 270 nm. Paeoniflorin and paeoniflorin sulfonate could be simultaneously detected in different commercial PAR-containing complex preparations without interference of other components using the established method, indicating that the newly established method was selective and sensitive enough for screening sulfur-fumigated PAR in commercial complex preparations.

An anti-fibrotic compound produced by Streptomyces xiamenensis, found in mangrove sediments, was investigated for possible therapeutic effects against fibrosis. The compound, N-[[3,4-dihydro-3S-hydroxy-2S-methyl-2-(4¢R-methyl-3¢S-pentenyl)-2H-1-benzopyran-6-yl]carbonyl]-threonine (1), was isolated from crude extracts and its structure, including the absolute configuration was determined by extensive spectroscopic data analyses, Mosher’s method, Marfey’s reagent and quantum mechanical calculations. In terms of biological effects, this compound inhibits the proliferation of human lung fibroblasts (WI26), blocks adhesion of human acute monocytic leukemia cells (THP-1) to a monolayer of WI26 cells, and reduces the contractile capacity of WI26 cells in three-dimensional free-floating collagen gels. Altogether, these data indicate that we have identified a bioactive alkaloid (1) with multiple inhibitory biological effects on lung excessive fibrotic characteristics, that are likely involved in fibrosis, suggesting that this molecule might indeed have therapeutic potential against fibrosis.

In the present work, a microchannel reactor for autothermal reforming of methanol using a synthesized catalyst porous alumina support-CuO/ZnO mixed with ZrO2 sol washcoat has been developed and its fine structure and inner surface characterized. Experimentally, CuO/ZnO and alumina support with ZrO2 sol washcoat catalyst (catalyst slurries) nanoparticles is the catalytically active component of the microreactor. Catalyst slurries have been dried at 298 K for 5 h and then calcined at 623 K for 2 h to increase the surface area and specific pore structures of the washcoat catalyst. The surface area of BET N2 adsorption isotherms for the as-synthesized catalyst and catalyst/ZrO2 sol washcoat samples are 62 and 108 ± 2 m2g−1, respectively. The intensities of Cu content from XRD and XPS data indicate that Al2O3 with Cu species to form CuAl2O4. The EXAFS data reveals that the Cu species in washcoat samples have Cu-O bonding with a bond distance of 1.88 ± 0.02 Å and the coordination number is 3.46 ± 0.05, respectively. Moreover, a hydrogen production rate of 2.16 L h−1 is obtained and the corresponding methanol conversion is 98% at 543 K using the CuO/ZnO with ZrO2 sol washcoat catalyst.

The associations between sarcopenia and metabolic syndrome (MetS) in non-obese middle-aged and older adults remain controversial. Thus, this meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the overall prevalence of MetS and the correlations between sarcopenia and MetS in middle-aged and older non-obese adults. We performed a systematic searched strategy using PUBMED, EMBASE and Web of Science databases for relevant observational studies investigating sarcopenia and MetS up to 11 May 2017. The polled prevalence of MetS and odds ratios with 95% confidence intervals (CI), as well as subgroup analyses were calculated using a random effects model. Twelve articles with a total of 35,581 participants were included. The overall prevalence of MetS was 36.45% (95% CI, 28.28–45.48%) in middle-aged and older non-obese adults with sarcopenia. Our analysis demonstrated a positive association between sarcopenia and MetS (OR = 2.01, 95% CI, 1.63–2.47). The subgroup analysis showed that both larger cohort size and the use of dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry to measure body composition can enhance the relationship. Our study revealed that a higher proportion of MetS in middle-aged and older non-obese people with sarcopenia. Moreover, sarcopenia was positively associated with MetS in this population. Further large-scale prospective cohort studies are needed to investigate the causality between sarcopenia and MetS.