Alleviating effects and mechanisms of action of large-leaf yellow tea drinking on diabetes and diabetic nephropathy in mice

Our previous study found that large-leaf yellow tea(LYT)had interesting hypoglycemic activity in high-fat diet-induced obese mice and highly safety in healthy mice. To study the anti-diabetic potential of LYT, the present study further investigated the preventive effects and mechanisms of action of LYT administration on diabetes and diabetic nephropathy in high-fat diet plus streptozotocin-induced diabetic mice. Results showed that LYT infusions(1/100 and 1/50, m/V)as drinking fluid for 4 weeks reduced diabetic polydipsia and polyuria, enhanced glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity, and lowered fasting blood glucose level. The underlying mechanisms involve downregulation of gluconeogenesis(lower protein levels of TXNIP and FBP and enzyme activity of FBP), upregulation of lipid catabolism(higher protein levels of CPT-1α and PPARα), downregulation of lipogenesis(lower protein level of SREBP-1), and modification of the structure and abundance of gut microbiota to modulate metabolic homeostasis. Moreover, LYT administration prevented diabetic nephropathy, possibly due to reduced glucose-caused osmotic diuresis and lowered levels of renal PKC-β2, NLRP3 as well as membrane PKC-α, AQP2 and glycosylated AQP2 proteins. Taken together, LYT exhibits the activities in alleviating diabetic symptoms, ameliorating glucose and lipid dysmetabolism and fatty liver, and preventing diabetic nephropathy in diabetic mice. These activities may be explored for the prevention and treatment of diabetes in humans.

Salient Object Detection Based on a Novel Combination Framework Using the Perceptual Matching and Subjective-Objective Mapping Technologies

The integrity and fineness characterization of non-connected regions and contours is a major challenge for existing salient object detection.The key to address is how to make full use of the subjective and objective structural information obtained in different steps.Therefore,by simulating the human visual mechanism,this paper proposes a novel multi-decoder matching correction network and subjective structural loss.Specifically,the loss pays different attentions to the foreground,boundary,and background of ground truth map in a top-down structure.And the perceived saliency is mapped to the corresponding objective structure of the prediction map,which is extracted in a bottom-up manner.Thus,multi-level salient features can be effectively detected with the loss as constraint.And then,through the mapping of improved binary cross entropy loss,the differences between salient regions and objects are checked to pay attention to the error prone region to achieve excellent error sensitivity.Finally,through tracking the identifying feature horizontally and vertically,the subjective and objective interaction is maximized.Extensive experiments on five benchmark datasets demonstrate that compared with 12 state-of-the-art methods,the algorithm has higher recall and precision,less error and strong robustness and generalization ability,and can predict complete and refined saliency maps.

大学生外向性、活力与生命意义感的关系研究

目的:探讨大学生的活力感在外向性和生命意义感之间的中介作用。方法:随机在河南省某大学选取249名大学生,采用主观活力量表,中国大五人格问卷简版及生命意义感量表进行测量。结果:外向性与活力均对生命意义感有正向预测作用,控制了活力后,外向性对生命意义感的正向预测作用不再显著。结论:活力感在外向性和生命意义感之间起完全中介作用。

In vitro Anti-viral Activity of the Total Alkaloids from Tripterygium hypoglaucum against Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1

Herpes simplex virus type 1 （HSV-1） is a commonly occurring human pathogen worldwide. There is an urgent need to discover and develop new alternative agents for the management of HSV-1 infection. Tripterygium hypoglaucum （level） Hutch （Celastraceae） is a traditional Chinese medicine plant with many pharmacological activities such as anti-inflammation, anti-tumor and antifertility. The usual medicinal part is the roots which contain about a 1% yield of alkaloids. A crude total alkaloids extract was prepared from the roots of T. hypoglaucum amd its antiviral activity against HSV-1 in Vero cells was evaluated by cytopathic effect （CPE） assay, plaque reduction assay and by RT-PCR analysis. The alkaloids extract presented low cytotoxicity （CC50 = 46.6μg/mL） and potent CPE inhibition activity, the 50% inhibitory concentration （ICs0） was 6.5 μg/mL, noticeably lower than that of Acyclovir （15.4μg /mL）. Plaque formation was significantly reduced by the alkaloids extract at concentrations of 6.25 μg/mL to 12.5 μg/mL, the plaque reduction ratio reached 55% to 75% which was 35% higher than that of Acyclovir at the same concentration. RT-PCR analysis showed that, the transcription of two important delayed early genes UL30 and UL39, and a late gene US6 of HSV-1 genome all were suppressed by the alkaloids extract, the expression inhibiting efficacy compared to the control was 74.6% （UL30）, 70.9% （UL39） and 62.6% （US6） respectively at the working concentration of 12.5μg/mL. The above results suggest a potent anti-HSV-1 activity of the alkaloids extract in vitro.

Effect of siRNAs on HSV-1 Plaque Formation and Relative Expression Levels of RR mRNA

RNA interference (RNAi) is a process by which introduced small interfering RNA (siRNA) can cause the specific degradation of mRNA with identical sequences. The human herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) RR is composed of two distinct homodimeric subunits encoded by UL39 and UL40,respectively. In this study,we applied siRNAs targeting the UL39 and UL40 genes of HSV-1. We showed that synthetic siRNA silenced effectively and specifically UL39 and UL40 mRNA expression and inhibited HSV-1 replication. Our work offers new possibilities for RNAi as a genetic tool for inhibition of HSV-1 replication.

The rapid climate change-caused dichotomy on subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forest in Yunnan： Reduction in habitat diversity and increase in species diversity

Yunnan's biodiversity is under considerable pressure and subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests in this area have become increasingly fragmented through agriculture,logging,planting of economic plants,mining activities and changing environment.The aims of the study are to investigate climate changeinduced changes of subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests in Yunnan and identify areas of current species richness centers for conservation preparation.Stacked species distribution models were created to generate ensemble forecasting of species distributions,alpha diversity and beta diversity for Yunnan's subtropical evergreen broad-leaved forests in both current and future climate scenarios.Under stacked species distribution models in rapid climate changes scenarios,changes of water-energy dynamics may possibly reduce beta diversity and increase alpha diversity.This point provides insight for future conservation of evergreen broad-leaved forest in Yunnan,highlighting the need to fully consider the problem of vegetation homogenization caused by transformation of water-energy dynamics.

Combustion and emissions of RP-3 jet fuel and diesel fuel in a single-cylinder diesel engine

The combustion characteristics and emission behaviors of RP-3 jet fuel were studied and compared to commercial diesel fuel in a single-cylinder compression ignition(CI)engine.Engine operational parameters,including engine load(0.6,0.7,and 0.8 MPa indicating the mean effective pressure(IMEP)),the exhaust gas recirculation(EGR)rate(0%,10%,20%,and 30%),and the fuel injection timing(–20,–15,–10,and–5°crank angle(CA)after top dead center(ATDC))were adjusted to evaluate the engine performances of RP-3 jet fuel under changed operation conditions.In comparison to diesel fuel,RP-3 jet fuel shows a retarded heat release and lagged combustion phase,which is more obvious under heavy EGR rate conditions.In addition,the higher premixed combustion fraction of RP-3 jet fuel leads to a higher first-stage heat release peak than diesel fuel under all testing conditions.As a result,RP-3 jet fuel features a longer ignition delay(ID)time,a shorter combustion duration(CD),and an earlier CA50 than diesel fuel.The experimental results manifest that RP-3 jet fuel has a slightly lower indicated thermal efficiency(ITE)compared to diesel fuel,but the ITE difference becomes less noticeable under large EGR rate conditions.Compared with diesel fuel,the nitrogen oxides(NOx)emissions of RP-3 jet fuel are higher while its soot emissions are lower.The NOx emissions of RP-3 can be effectively reduced with the increased EGR rate and delayed injection timing.