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Nanotechnology is an effective way to stimulate the yield potential of crops.

The activation of immune cells by immunoregulatory active substances can improve the body immunity. Carbon dots (CDs) with immunoregulatory activity are rarely reported. In this study, transmission electron microscopy results demonstrate the existence of CDs in herbal tea, while Fourier transform infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy results suggest the participation of polyphenol in herbal tea CD (H-CD) formation. The photoluminescence spectrum has shown that H-CDs have fluorescence emission at 565 nm and exhibit an excitation-dependent property. The toxicity and immunostimulatory activity of H-CDs on mouse macrophage RAW264.7 suggested that H-CDs had no toxicity to RAW264.7 cells. Meanwhile, compared with herbal tea, H-CDs have more obvious effect of promoting the expression of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and inducible nitric oxide synthase. In addition, the secretion of nitric oxide (NO) was promoted by H-CDs. This work suggests that H-CDs have stronger immunoregulatory function than that of original herbal tea, which provides a direction for the application of phenolic hydroxyl-modified CDs in the biomedical field.

As a special type of biomass, herbal medicine often contains a variety of biologically active substances, and taking it as a carbon source, it is expected to produce various types of biologically functional carbon dots (CDs). However, there are few reports in this field, especially in achieving enhanced performance of CDs by improving the utilization efficiency of active substances in medicinal materials. In this work, by adding glycine as an auxiliary agent in the preparation of CDs from herbal medicine (Exocarpium Citri Grandis), the carboxyl and amino groups of the adjuvant provided more reactive sites, which greatly improved the yield of CDs (about 6 times). More importantly, the antioxidant and biological activities of herbal CDs were also improved. By controlling the functional groups of adjuvants, the effects of carboxyl and amino groups in adjuvants on the synthesis of herbal CDs were compared. The results reveal that both carboxyl and amino groups can react with the substances in the carbon source, and the influence of amino groups was greater. After adding glycine, the size of the CDs became larger, resulting from the more abundant functional groups on the carbon skeleton, which was the main reason for the improved performance of the CDs. Finally, the biological activity experiment demonstrated that CDs derived from Exocarpium Citri Grandis and glycine could greatly enhance the vitality of cells and activate immune cells, which are expected to be applied in the field of cell reproduction and biological immunity. The method proposed in this work provides a potential strategy for high-yield preparation of CDs from biomass.

Synthesis and purification of three carbon dots and the application of R-CDs in microalgae lipid imaging.

A hybrid optical/electrical datacenter network (HOE-DCN) integrates the benefits of electrical packet switching (EPS) and optical circuit switching (OCS) for better architectural scalability. Meanwhile, as each network service usually involves multiple virtual machines (VMs) that form a virtual network (VNT), how to reconfigure the VNTs in an HOE-DCN to adapt to the dynamic network environment becomes an interesting and important problem to tackle. In this work, we optimize the procedure of VNT reconfigurations that remap VNTs to given virtual network embedding (VNE) schemes, i.e. , scheduling the required VM migrations and optical cross-connect (OXC) reconfiguration properly such that the overall VNT reconfiguration latency can be minimized. We first assume that all the VM migrations should be scheduled before the OXC reconfiguration to minimize service interruptions, and formulate a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model to solve the scheduling problem exactly. Then, with the same assumption, we propose a time-efficient heuristic to schedule parallel VM migrations in batches such that the bandwidth competition can be significantly relieved. Finally, we divide the OXC reconfiguration into several progressive steps, and design a joint scheduling algorithm to arrange VM migrations together with the OXC reconfiguration steps.

Step-scheme (S-scheme) photocatalysts have been proposed for highly efficient charge separation and strong redox activity in the photocatalysis field. Here, we reported a facile strategy to obtain the S-scheme heterojunction composite TiO2/chlorophyll (Chl). The S-scheme heterojunction enables the significant improvement of electron transfer efficiency at the interfacial heterojunction of TiO2/Chl. Also, the lifted conduction band and valence band of TiO2/Chl resulted in more than 1.61 times generation of reactive oxidizing species, compared to that of bare TiO2. In addition, TiO2/Chl was applied as a photocatalytic bactericidal material to fabricate commercial masks for prolonged life span of the mask. The TiO2/Chl-coated mask filter exhibited excellent bactericidal effect on Escherichia coli under light illumination (2.94 × 107 cfu E. coli were killed by 1 cm-2 coated mask filters within illumination of 3 h), while commercial mask filters showed no bactericidal effect. After three circulation-sterilization tests, the TiO2/Chl-made mask filter maintained the initial bactericidal effect, which greatly extended the life span of the mask that presents a promising strategy to alleviate the supply stress of masks.

Rice microRNA168a (osa-miR168a) plays important roles in mediating flowering time, grain yield and vigor, seeding growth, and immunity by targeting the RNA-induced silencing complex component Argonaute 1 (AGO1). However, the functions of miR168a exerted by targeting other genes require further clarification before it could be used in rice molecular breeding. In this study, we identified a new target gene of osa-miR168a-5p (miR168a-5p) in rice called OsOFP3 (ovate family protein 3) and investigated the roles of miR168a-5p in response to brassinosteroids (BRs), salt stress, and nitrogen allocation. Up- and downregulated miR168a-5p expression respectively decreased and increased the expression of the BR-negative regulator OsOPF3. The results of RNA ligase-mediated rapid amplification of cDNA ends (5'RLM-RACE) revealed cleavage sites in OsOPF3 and OsNPF2.4 mRNAs. The phenotype of miR168a-5p transgenic rice was BR-associated and included the lamina bending response to BR, short seeds, and low 1000-grain weight. MicroRNA 168a-5p also regulated the expression of the nitrate transporter, OsNPF2.4, which affected nitrogen allocation, and regulated OsAGO1a expression in response to salt stress. Taken together, rice miR168a-5p regulates BR-associated pathways, nitrogen transport, and stress by targeting OsOFP3, OsNPF2.4, and OsAGO1a, respectively, resulting in a series of important agronomic traits for rice breeding.

To closely monitor the performance of lightpaths in an elastic optical network (EON), people need to rely on real-time and fine-grained spectrum monitoring. This, however, will generate tremendous telemetry data, which can put great pressure on both the control and data planes. In this work, we design and experimentally demonstrate AutoSpecheck, which is a DL-assisted network automation (DLaNA) system that can realize highly-efficient and automatic spectrum inspection for anomaly detection in EONs. Specifically, we architect AutoSpecheck based on the software-defined EON (SD-EON) architecture, and propose techniques to greatly reduce the loads of data reporting (in the data plane) and data analyzing (in the control plane). To reduce the loads of data reporting, we leverage the AutoEncoder (AE) technique to design a spectrum data compression method. To improve the efficiency of data analytics, we first design a coarse filtering module (CFM) to let the control plane filter out most of the normal data before invoking the DL-based anomaly detection. Then, to address the difficulty of labeling massive spectrum data, we develop a DL-based anomaly detection based on semi-supervised learning. Our experimental demonstrations consider two representative intra-channel anomalies ( i.e. , the filter drifting and in-band jamming), and the results confirm that AutoSpecheck can achieve highly-efficient and automatic spectrum inspection for anomaly detection in EONs.

The regulation of plant growth and developmental processes by carbon dots (CDs) has been frequently reported. However, little is known about how CDs are related to the yield and nutritional quality...

This article studies the problem of virtual network (VNT) slicing in datacenter interconnections (DCIs), and proposes a novel service framework to better balance the tradeoff between cost-effectiveness, and time-efficiency. Our idea is to partition a DCI into non-overlapped subgraphs, divide the VNT slicing in each subgraph into four collaborative steps, and get tenants involved in the calculation of virtual network embedding (VNE) schemes. With our proposal, an agent of infrastructure provider (InP) leverages deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to price, and advertise the substrate resources in one subgraph, motivates tenants to request resources in a load-balanced manner, and accepts VNE schemes from the tenants to avoid resource conflicts. Meanwhile, the tenants’ task is to compute their own VNE schemes independently, and distributedly according to the resource information ( i.e. , the available resources, and their prices) advertised by the agent. We first design the DRL model based on the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG), and develop a VNT compression method based on auto-encoder (AE) to generalize the DRL's operation. Then, we study how to resolve resource conflicts among the distributedly-calculated VNE schemes, build a conflict graph (CG) to transform the VNE selection into finding the maximum weighted independent set (MWIS) in the CG, and design a polynomial-time approximation algorithm to solve the problem. Extensive simulations confirm that compared with the centralized service framework relying solely on the InP for VNE calculation, our proposed DRL-assisted distributed framework provisions VNT requests with significantly shorter computation time, and comparable blocking performance.

Biomass is a major resource for the preparation of carbon dots (CDs) and improving the production yield of CDs is a challenge. Herein, we select corn cobs as cheap, abundant, and renewable biomass to prepare CDs with a production yield as high as 55%. Through studying the main components (cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin) of a corn cob, we determine that such a high yield is derived from the high content of hemicellulose and extremely low lignin content of the corn cob. This indicates that hemicellulose is beneficial to the formation of CDs during the hydrothermal process, while cellulose and hemicellulose are not. This mechanism is further verified using four other biomass sources (linen stalks, coir fibres, peanut shells, and bamboos) with different cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin contents. Based on fluorescence quenching, the prepared CDs display excellent feasibility for Fe3+ selective detection with a good linear correlation ranging from 0 to 120 μM. This work reveals the effects of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin biomass on CDs thus providing a novel strategy for the selection of a precursor and large-scale preparation of CDs, laying the groundwork for the industrial synthesis and application of CDs.

With the evolution of Internet infrastructure and network services, multilayer in-band network telemetry (ML-INT) and data analytics (DA) have been considered as key enabling techniques to realize real-time and fine-grained network monitoring, especially for backbone IP-over-Optical networks. However, the existing ML-INT&DA systems have privacy and security issues, because plaintext ML-INT data is reported from the data plane and gets analyzed in the control plane. In this work, we address these issues by designing a privacy-preserving ML-INT&DA system for IP-over-Optical networks. We first leverage vector homomorphic encryption (VHE) to design a lightweight encryption scheme, which overcomes the security breaches due to eavesdropping and preserves the delicate correlations buried in multi-dimensional ML-INT data. Then, we develop an effective data compression scheme to further encode the encrypted ML-INT data and make the results suitable for hash-based signature. The signature is for data certification and enables the DA in the control plane to verify the integrity of received ML-INT data. Hence, the threats from data tampering are removed. Next, we architect a deep learning (DL) model that can directly operate on encrypted ML-INT data for anomaly detection. Finally, we implement the proposed ML-INT&DA system, and experimentally demonstrate its effectiveness in a real IP over elastic optical network (IP-over-EON) testbed, whose key elements, i.e., optical line system (OLS), bandwidth-variable wavelength-selective switches (BV-WSS’) and programmable data plane (PDP) switches, are all commercial products.

Nd:BiVO4 nanocrystals were synthesized by an effective and simple approach. Nd was incorporated into BiVO4 host to enhance electronic conductivity and lithium-ion diffusion kinetics, thus promoting the electrochemical performance. When employed as anode materials in lithium-ion batteries, a good cycling stability and high capacity of ~611 mAh g−1 at 100 mA g−1 were delivered. The work can be extensively employed for fabricating other electrode materials and promoting the electrochemical performance in energy storage correlative domains.

In this study, a hybrid semiartificial photosynthesis system based on chloroplast (CLP) and titanium oxide nanoparticles (TiO2 NPs) was constructed. 2,6-Dichlorophenolindophenol (DCPIP) reduction by TiO2/CLP complex and methylene blue (MB) reduction by TiO2 were used to determine enhanced photogenerated electron transfer in this hybrid system. The DCPIP reduction by the TiO2/CLP complex showed the same trend as MB reduction by TiO2 as a function of concentration of TiO2 NPs, indicating interception of photogenerated electrons in TiO2 by CLP that leads to enhanced photosynthesis efficiency. Decreased photoluminescence intensity and shortened excited-state lifetime of the TiO2/CLP complex compared to that of pure TiO2 also support electron transfer from TiO2 to CLP. Longer visible light absorption wavelength and increasing valence band edges reveal the narrower band gap of TiO2/CLP, which finally results in the enhanced electron transfer from TiO2 to CLP. Higher ferricyanide reduction and enhanced ATP formation with the TiO2/CLP complex demonstrate the accelerated electron-transfer rate of the electron-transfer chain. This study reveals the mechanism of how TiO2 interacts with CLP to enhance the photosynthesis via constructing a semiartificial photosynthesis system.

Considerable attention on semiconducting nanocrystallines have been paid owing to their fascinating electrical and optical features, which can be utilized as luminophor and light absorber. Herein, we report a facile and ligand-free protocol to synthesize high-quality CdS nanocrystals on titanium plate. The crystal structural, micro-structural, local structural, surface chemistry and optical properties of CdS nanocrystals have been investigated. pH value dependent optical features of CdS nanocrystals are explored by photoluminescence and UV–vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. XRD results manifest that these products possess polycrystalline characteristics, cubic zinc-blende structure and nanomaterial features. The crystal defects and microstructure of these nanocrystals are researched by analysis of XRD line profiles. TEM images display nearly spherical nanocrystals with mean size about 4 nm, well crystalline feature and interplanar spacings of cubic zinc-blende CdS nanocrystals. Raman results also reveal the cubic sphalerite structure of CdS nanocrystals. The first three Raman peaks are assigned to the first, second, and third-order longitudinal optical phonon modes of cubic CdS, respectively. Interestingly, optical absorption spectra display that the absorbance shoulder shows a noticeable change with pH value of the precursor. The observations show that the nanocrystalline size is smaller at lower pH value and it changes as the pH value of the precursor alters, and CdS nanocrystals exhibit significant quantum confinement. More importantly, Photoluminescence spectra show that the first emission peaks can be attributed to band-edge luminescence, which is originated from the recombination of shallow trapped hole-electron pairs and/or excitons in cadmium sulfide nanomaterials, while the second emission peaks can be corresponded to trap-state luminescence, and PL intensity changes with the pH value of the precursor. The insights offered in this work may pave the way to devising of improved synthetic schemes for semiconductor nanocrystals with tailored microstructural properties, permitting precise adjusting of the optoelectronic performances of the prepared materials.

As one of the most promising fluorescent nanomaterials, the fluorescence of carbon dots (CDs) in solution is extensively studied. Nevertheless, the synthesis of multicolor solid-state fluorescence (SSF) CDs is rarely reported. Herein, CDs with multicolor aggregation-induced emission are prepared using amine molecules, all of them exhibiting dual fluorescence emission at 480 nm (Em-1) and 580-620 nm (Em-2), which is related to the SS bonds of dithiosalicylic acid and the conjugated structure attached to CO/CN bonds, respectively. As a strong electron-withdrawing group, the increase of CN content makes dual-fluorescent groups on the surface of CDs produce push and pull electrons, which determines intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) between the double emission. With the increase in CN content from 35.6% to 58.4%, the ICT efficiency increases from 8.71% to 45.94%, changing the fluorescence of CDs from green to red. The increase of ICT efficiency causes fluorescence quantum yield enhancement by nearly five times and redshift of the fluorescence peak. Finally, based on the multicolor luminescence properties induced by the aggregation of CDs, pattern encryption and white-LED devices are realized. Based on the fat solubility and strong ultraviolet absorption characteristics of CDs, fingerprint detection and leaf anti-UV hazards are applied.

Step-scheme (S-scheme) photocatalysts have been proposed for highly efficient charge separation and strong redox activity in the photocatalysis field. Here, we reported a facile strategy to obtain the S-scheme heterojunction composite TiO

Since the current Chinese spam messages often contain artificial adversarial perturbation and can bypass the traditional detection system, this paper proposed an integrated model based on “ALBERT-Capsule Network.”On the one hand, the model accepts both raw text and word segmentation text as input data, uses ALBERT and capsule networks to extract character-level features and word-level features respectively, and uses a multi-head output structure to ensure that both the word feature stream and the word feature stream can be meaningfully trained to prevent the neural network from depending on one of its branches. Experiments on the SMS spam dataset and trec06c datasets prove that the model is better than the traditional single-feature models such as Bi-LSTM and TextCNN; On the other hand, the traditional character replacement, pinyin replacement and word splitting and other adversarial methods are used to augment the original training dataset, which further enhances the robustness of the model, so that the model can effectively detect spam messages containing adversarial perturbation.

There have been more than 2.2 million confirmed cases and over 120 000 deaths from the human coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), in the United States alone. However, there is currently a lack of proven effective medications against COVID-19. Drug repurposing offers a promising route for the development of prevention and treatment strategies for COVID-19. This study reports an integrative, network-based deep-learning methodology to identify repurposable drugs for COVID-19 (termed CoV-KGE). Specifically, we built a comprehensive knowledge graph that includes 15 million edges across 39 types of relationships connecting drugs, diseases, proteins/genes, pathways, and expression from a large scientific corpus of 24 million PubMed publications. Using Amazon’s AWS computing resources and a network-based, deep-learning framework, we identified 41 repurposable drugs (including dexamethasone, indomethacin, niclosamide, and toremifene) whose therapeutic associations with COVID-19 were validated by transcriptomic and proteomics data in SARS-CoV-2-infected human cells and data from ongoing clinical trials. Whereas this study by no means recommends specific drugs, it demonstrates a powerful deep-learning methodology to prioritize existing drugs for further investigation, which holds the potential to accelerate therapeutic development for COVID-19.

Deepfakes, which are used to generate and modify human faces, have developed rapidly in recent years. However, as they transfer facial features to target pictures and videos, it is difficult to distinguish the original faces, which has a serious impact on individuals and society. In this survey, we introduce deepfakes technology and classify them into face generation, face swap and facial attribute editing. Moreover, we discuss and summarize the current situation, classic technology, cutting-edge models and public fake datasets of the three aspects. Lastly, we provide an outlook of the development trend of deepfakes in terms of improving authenticity and strengthening confrontation detection.

Carbon dots (CDs) with gradient-changed quantum yield (QY) were prepared by regulating the graphitic N and hydroxyl group contents. Then, the QY effect of CDs on plant photosynthesis was studied using chloroplasts and rice plants. After incubation for 2 h in the dark, CDs entered into the chloroplasts and converted ultraviolet radiation to photosynthetically active radiation. By this mechanism, CD1:0.2 (300 μg·mL−1) with a moderate QY of 46.42% significantly increased the photosynthetic activity of chloroplast (200 μg·mL−1) to reduce DCPIP and ferricyanide by 43.77% and 25.45%, respectively. After spraying on rice seedlings, CD1:0.2 (300 μg·mL−1) was evenly distributed in the leaves and resulted in maximum increases in the electron transport rate and photosynthetic efficiency of photosystem II by 29.81% and 29.88%, respectively. Furthermore, CD1:0.2 significantly increased the chlorophyll content and RuBisCO carboxylase activity of rice by 64.53% and 23.39%, respectively. Consequently, significant increases were observed in the growth of CD1:0.2-treated rice, including 18.99%, 64.31%, and 61.79% increases in shoot length, dry weights of shoot and root. These findings contribute to the exploitation of solar energy and agricultural production using CDs in the future.

This paper introduces a wireless remote monitoring system for mechanical vibration, which is designed by using embedded technology and ZigBee technology. The system transplants the core of processor S3C2410 to embedded FTP server and boa server (called embedded dual server) for data collection and remote monitoring. Mechanical vibration data is collected and transmitted to double servers through ZigBee network, and all the data can be accessed remotely through the Internet. The paper introduces all the details of the design, and the comparison experiment shows that the system can effectively realize the collection remote and monitoring of mechanical vibration data.

We previously showed that ANG II induces mesangial cell (MC) proliferation via the JNK-activator protein-1 pathway. The present study attempted to determine the upstream mediators of JNK activation, with emphasis on reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor (EGFR). In cultured human MCs (HMCs), as early as 3 min, ANG II time dependently increased intracellular ROS production, which was sensitive to 10 μM diphenyleneiodonium sulfate and 500 μM apocynin, two structurally distinct NADPH oxidase inhibitors. In contrast, inhibitors of other oxidant-producing enzymes, including the mitochondrial complex I inhibitor rotenone, the xanthine oxidase inhibitor allopurinol, the cyclooxygenase inhibitor indomethacin, the lipoxygenase inhibitor nordihydroguiaretic acid, the cytochrome P-450 oxygenase inhibitor ketoconazole, and the nitric oxide synthase inhibitor NG-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester, were without effect. ANG II-induced ROS generation was inhibited by the angiotensin type 1 receptor antagonist losartan (10 μM) but not the angiotensin type 2 receptor antagonist PD-123319 (10 μM). ANG II induced translocation of p47phoxand p67phoxfrom the cytosol to the membrane. The antioxidants almost abolished the ANG II mitogenic response, as assessed by [3H]thymidine incorporation and cell number, associated with a remarkable blockade of the activation of EGFR (90% inhibition) and JNK (83% inhibition). The EGFR inhibitor AG-1478 was able to mimic the effect of antioxidants, in that it inhibited the mitogenic response and the JNK activation following ANG II treatment. Together, these data suggest that the ROS-EGFR-JNK pathway is involved in transducing the proliferative effect of ANG II in cultured HMCs.

Huang Qi Huai (HQH) granules, a mixture of Chinese herbs, contains trametes robiniophila murr, wolfberry fruit, and Polygonatum. We investigated the mechanism of the protective effects of HQH on adriamycin nephrosis (ADR) in rats. Adriamycin nephrotic rats were induced by a single dose of 5 mg/kg adriamycin. For the HQH-treated adriamycin nephrosis group, 1 day after treatment with 5 mg/kg adriamycin, the rats were administered once-daily oral gavage of 2 mg/kg HQH for 15 days. All the rats were killed at day 15. Histological changes were observed by light microscopy and transmission electron microscope. Nephrin and podocin expression levels were measured by real-time RT-PCR and Western blot. Proteinuria was measured by the Bradford protein assay. Serum TNF-α and IL-1β levels were evaluated by ELISA. Macrophage infiltration was detected by immunohistochemistry and immunoblotting, respectively. ADR rats showed heavy proteinuria, podocyte and tubulointerstitial injury, macrophage infiltration, and increased levels of serum cytokines TNF-α and IL-1β. HQH significantly ameliorated the adriamycin-induced renal injury. These data were validated in the cultured podocytes. The podocytes were treated by adriamycin in the presence or absence of HQH and nephrin and podocin expression and TNF-α and IL-1β synthesis and secretion were determined by real-time RT-PCR, immunoblotting, and ELISA, respectively. Adriamycin significantly reduced nephrin and podocin expression, which was significantly restored by the treatment of HQH. HQH treatment inhibited adriamycin-induced TNF-α and IL-1β expression. Our findings suggest that HQH significantly reduces proteinuria, prevents podocyte injury, and ameliorates tubulointerstitial damage. Inhibition of inflammatory cytokine expression and macrophage infiltration may be the protective mechanism of HQH.

Objective Monocytes/macrophages, proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines are important in the pathogenesis of glomerulonephritis. Interleukin (IL) -13 has been shown to exert potent anti-inflammatory properties. This study was designed to investigate the effect of IL-13 on the expression of proinflammatory cytokines, chemokines and profibrogenic cytokines and the involved molecular mechanism in cultured human mesangial cells (HMCs). Methods The expressions of proinflammatory cytokines, chemokines and profibrogenic cytokines were determined by ribonuclease protection assay (RPA). Activity of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB) and activator protein-1 (AP-1) was examined by electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). NF-κB subunit p65 nuclear transportation and c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) activity were assayed by immunoblot. Results Recombinant IL-13 inhibited tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), IL-1α, IL-1β, monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1), IL-8, and transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) mRNA expressions in a dose-dependent manner. Lipopolysacchorides (LPS) dramatically increased NF-κB DNA binding activity of HMCs, which was inhibited by IL-13 in a dose-dependent manner. LPS-activated NF-κB contained p50 and p65 dimers, but not c-Rel subunit. IL-13 blocked LPS-induced NF-κB subunit p65. LPS stimulated JNK/AP-1 activation, which was inhibited by IL-13 in a dose-dependent manner. Conclusion IL-13 inhibits proinflammatory cytokines, chemokines, and profibrogenic cytokines synthesis by blocking NF-κB and JNK/AP-1 activation. These observations point to the importance of IL-13 in the modulation of inflammatory processes in the renal glomerulus.

We investigated the role of c-Jun NH2-terminal kinase (JNK), a member of the mitogen-activated protein kinase family, in the expression of angiotensin II (Ang II)-induced monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) and transforming growth factor-1 (TGF-1), and in the production of fibronectin (FN), by human mesangial cells (HMCs).JNK activation in cultured human mesangial cells was determined by Western blotting with an antibody against the phosphorylated Ser63 residue of c-Jun. Binding of the activator protein (AP-1) to the MCP-1 AP-1 motif was detected via the electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). The transient luciferase reporter was used to examine MCP-1 promoter activity; an RNase protection assay and ELISA were used respectively to detect the expression of MCP-1 mRNA and production of MCP-1, TGF-beta and FN.Anthra (1,9-cd) pyrazol-6(2H)-one (SP600125), a pharmacological inhibitor of JNK, almost completely abolished Ang II-induced Ser63 phosphorylation of c-Jun at concentrations of 5-20 micromol/L: JNK activity was reduced by 75% with 10 micromol/L SP600125, and by 90% with 20 micromol/L. Ang II increased AP-1 binding to the MCP-1 AP-1 motif in a time-dependent manner, as detected by EMSA, while SP600125 effectively blocked this increased AP-1 binding in a concentration-dependent manner. Treatment with 100 nmol/L Ang II led to a steady increase in MCP-1 mRNA expression, and to an enhanced production of MCP-1, TGF-beta and FN. These effects were blocked by SP60025 in a dose-dependent manner. SP600125 also reduced MCP-1 mRNA stability: the halflife of MCP-1 mRNA was approximately 5 hours in cells treated with Ang II only, but was reduced to 2 hours when treated with a combination of Ang II and SP600125.These results show that the JNK/AP-1 pathway is involved in the expression of MCP-1 and TGF-beta, and in extracellular matrix production. JNK is an important therapeutic target for glomerulonephritis and glomerulosclerosis.

A study on the relation between urinary cations and blood pressure was conducted in Wuhan, China. A total of 148 boys aged 7-8 years entered the study from November 23, 1984, to January 13, 1985. Seven consecutive 24-hour urine specimens were collected and blood pressure was measured on the seven successive days corresponding to urine collection. The multiple regression showed that none of the sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium cations was statistically significantly related to blood pressure. However, the ratio of sodium/calcium or potassium/calcium in the urine was positively correlated with systolic pressure in multivariate analysis. The results suggest that there may be a complex interaction between sodium and calcium in their effects on blood pressure, and genetic background might have some influences on the sodium/calcium (or potassium/calcium)-blood pressure relation in the 7-8-year-old boys in the study.