Search

An 8-week experiment was conducted to evaluate the effects of dietary fish meal ( FM) replaced by soybean protein concentrate ( SPC) on Japanese strain of soft-shelled turtle, Pelodiscus sinensis juveniles. Diets were formulated to replace FM protein by SPC at 0, 15, 30, 45, 60 or 60% supplemented with phytase (2000 FTU kg−1) (designated as S0, S15, S30, S45, S60 and S60P, respectively), and each diet was fed to triplicate groups. The results showed that the growth was significantly lower when dietary SPC replaced more than 45% FM. The turtles fed the S15 or S30 diet showed comparable feed and protein utilization efficiency compared with the S0 group, whereas more than 30% replacement of FM adversely affected these values. Increasing dietary SPC levels significantly lowered the apparent digestibility coefficients ( ADC) of dry matter, protein, lipid, phosphorus and gross energy. Whole-body protein, ash and phosphorus content showed a declining trend when dietary SPC levels increased, while body lipid and moisture content were unaffected. When the turtles were fed diets with increasing levels of SPC, serum total protein concentration, alkaline phosphatase and catalase activities decreased with a corresponding increase in glutamic pyruvic transaminase activity. Turtles fed the S60P diet showed comparable growth performance and feed utilization efficiency to the S40 group, and were superior to the S60 group. The present study showed that SPC could successfully substitute for 30% FM protein in the diets for P. sinensis juveniles, and the maximum effective substitution may be greater if exogenous phytase was added. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cortex Eucommiae (Du-zhong) is the dried bark of the Eucommia ulmoides Oliv. The natural products identified from Du-zhong include lignans, iridoids, flavonoids, polysaccharides, terpenes, and proteins, Liu et al. (2012). Lignans, the main bioactive components, were protective against hypertensive renal injury in spontaneous hypertensive rats in our previous study, Li et al. (2012). Moreover, Eucommia lignans also diminished aldose reductase (AR) overexpression in the kidney, Li et al. (2012). However, the pathological mechanism underlying the protective effects of Eucommia lignans remains unknown. Cellular proliferation was reported to contribute to important pathological changes in hypertensive renal injuries, and increased angiotensin II (Ang II) expression was reported to be essential for target-organ damage during hypertension. Ang II is the main effective peptide in the renin-angiotensin system and is considered to be a key mediator in the development of hypertensive nephropathy, Rüster and Wolf (2011). Our preliminary results showed that Eucommia lignans had inhibitory effects on Ang II-induced proliferation of rat mesangial cells. In the present study, we investigated the effects of Eucommia ulmoides on Ang II-induced proliferation and apoptosis of rat mesangial cells. Cell cycle-related genes P21 and P27, and cell apoptosis-related genes Bax and Bcl-2, were determined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia (D) are frequent features of Parkinson’s disease (PD) but widely disparate criteria have been used. Our understanding of the prevalence and cognitive profile of Chinese PD patients remains limited. In order to determine the frequency and pattern of cognitive dysfunction and identify risk factors for cognitive dysfunction in the Chinese Han PD population we performed a cross-sectional study in a cohort of 330 PD patients and 163 healthy controls. Five cognitive domains (executive function, attention, praxis and visuospatial function, memory, and language) and mood/behavior were evaluated. According to the Movement Disorder Society Task Force consensus criteria, up to 29.1% of PD patients were classified as PD-MCI and 32.1% as PD-D. Impairments occur in a range of cognitive domains with dysexecutive profile predominating. Healthy controls also outperformed cognitively preserved PD patients in tasks of executive function and attention. Logistic regression indicated that PD-MCI may be predicted by lower educational level and apathy. Additionally, later disease onset, longer disease duration, more severe motor symptoms and higher neuropsychiatric inventory score were associated with a faster transition from PD-MCI to PD-D. These findings suggest that all PD patients should undergo routine cognitive screening. For high-risk patients early recognition and therapeutic intervention is imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the interaction relation between geological object and engineering object in some fields related to water conservancy and hydropower, a unified modeling idea was proposed. On the basis of summarizing both advantages and disadvantages of existing modeling methods, an automatic unified modeling method of both engineering and geological objects based on tri-prism (TP) model was presented. Through the lossless correction algorithm of deviated drill holes contained in this method, the real deviated drill holes could be corrected into the equivalent virtual vertical ones. And the correction accuracy fully meets the requirements of unified modeling. With the virtual vertical drilling data, TIN construction of both cover layer and other stratums would be built in order to obtain the 3D geological model. Then, the engineering design data would be introduced into the 3D geological model for achieving unified modeling. For this process, the volume subdividing and restructuring principles were introduced to deal with the spatial relationships between engineering object and geological object. In order to improve the efficiency of unified modeling, the reconstruction of TIN based on constraint information was also applied in this method. At last, the feasibility and validation of the unified modeling method as well as its relevant key algorithms were verified by specific experiments and analysis of results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Practical teaching plays an important role in the higher education system in pharmaceutical sciences. Based on the situation in School of Pharmacy, Fudan University, herein we briefly introduce and review the practice and experience in the construction of Experimental Teaching Center of Pharmaceutical Sciences. It includes optimizing teaching staff, building teaching website, strengthening the standardized management of laboratories and resource sharing, promoting experimental teaching reform and external exchange. The reform improves campus cultural construction [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laboratory experiments were conducted to investigate the transformation and performance of a granular sequence batch reactor (SBR) under the conventional organic loading rate (OLR) condition. Aerobic granules were successfully cultivated in a SBR by means of alternative feeding load combined with reducing settling time after 60 d operational period. Subsequently, the black fungal granules were presented in reactor because of the filamentous overgrowth on the surface of aerobic granules. A small amount of fungal granules had no effect on the performance of granular SBR. Aerobic granules completely vanished and fungal granules eventually became the dominant species in subsequent 90 d operation after granulation. The three-dimensional excitation emission matrix (EEM) spectra result shows that the extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) component in both granules has no much difference, whereas the content of EPS in fungal granules is higher than that in bacterial granules. Due to their low bioactivity, the chemical oxidation demand (COD) and NH-N removal efficiencies gradually decrease from 90.4%-96.5% and 99.5% to 71.8% and 32.9% respectively while the fungal granules become dominant in the SBR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] An MAE method was developed for the extraction of alkaloids from Stephania sinica. [•] The MAE method is fast, energy-saving and environmental-friendly. [•] An HPLC method was developed for the quantitation of the target alkaloids. [•] The MAE–HPLC method is applicable to the analysis of the alkaloids in S. sinica. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]