Search

Using a team-based course development approach, the University of British Columbia collaborated with the Asia-Pacific Network for Sustainable Forest Management and Rehabilitation (APFNet) and universities from Australia, the Philippines, Malaysia, China, and Canada to design and develop six transnational, online, distance-education courses covering diverse topics such as sustainable forest policy, international dialogues in global forestry issues and forest restoration. The team-based approach is commonly used in online course development to form a cost-effective managerial and development team that manages timelines, coordinates solutions, and oversees budgets, all of which are particularly challenging for an international collaboration among universities across the Asia-Pacific region, due to cultural differences and variations in teaching and learning practices. This paper gives an overview of the design and development of transnational, online, distance-education courses, and the results of a pilot study that put the completed courses through an in-house, evidence-based quality enhancement rubric and a written survey reporting the leading professors' satisfaction with the project management and instructional design services. The quality enhancement rubric showed that the course designs were of high quality and the written survey revealed that the subject matter experts were satisfied overall. However, many improvements were suggested and could be implemented to improve the quality of course design, and the collaboration in orientating subject matter experts to the team-based development process, and in implementing best practices for online course design.

Objective: To systematically evaluate the evidence relating to acupuncture on the sleep quality of patients with Parkinson's disease. Data sources: Six English-language (PubMed, Cochrane Library, EBSCOhost, Embase, OVID MEDLINE, and Web of Science) and four Chinese-language (China National Knowledge Infrastructure, SinoMed, China Scientific Journals Database, and Wanfang) databases were searched for pertinent studies published from database inception to 11 October 2023. Methods: Two researchers independently screened eligible studies and extracted relevant data using custom data extraction tables. Methodological quality assessment of the included studies was performed using Cochrane Handbook 5.1.0. Meta-analysis was performed using Cochrane Review Manager version 5.4. Results: Twenty-four studies (1701 participants) met inclusion criteria. The meta-analysis showed that acupuncture improved the Parkinson's Disease Sleep Scale, Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index, Hamilton Anxiety Scale, Hamilton Depression Scale, Self-Rating Depression Scale, and Parkinson's Disease Questionnaire 39 scores compared with controls (all P < 0.05). Conclusion: This review showed that acupuncture improved sleep quality, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and quality of life of patients with Parkinson's disease relative to controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The combination of CoCl2·6H2O and a series of 4′-(substituted-phenyl)-2,2′:6′,2′′-terpyridine compounds bearing hydrogen (L1), p-methoxyl (L2), p-mesyl (L3), p-methyl (L4), p-bromo (L5), p-iodo (L6), p-phenyl (L7), p-chloro (L8), and p-fluoro (L9) leads to the formation of nine Co-based terpyridine complexes (1–9), which were characterized by elemental analysis and infrared spectroscopy. Their crystals obtained through solution evaporation or a hydrothermal process were investigated by single crystal X-ray diffraction. All complexes are mononuclear with central Co(II) coordinated to two terpyridine ligands to form a sandwich-like structure. The in vitro antiproliferative activity of these complexes against human lung carcinoma cell line (A549), human hepatocellular carcinoma cell line (Bel-7042) and human esophageal cancer cell line (Eca-109) was investigated, and a study on their toxicity was carried out on a normal human liver cell line (HL-7702). All complexes exhibit a better antiproliferative activity on cancer cells than the commercialized chemotherapy drug cisplatin. The UV-Vis spectroscopy results reveal that these complexes interact with CT-DNA in the embedding mode. The circular dichroic (CD) analysis confirms their strong affinity binding with CT-DNA and suggests that all compounds stack onto the base pairs of CT-DNA. Biomolecules including B-DNA, survivin protein, and DNA-topoisomerase I were selected to execute molecular docking, and the binding sites of complexes on these biomacromolecules were determined via computational docking analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Six silver hexafluoroantimonate complexes (1–6) with 4′-(4′-substituted-phenyl)-2,2′:6′,2′′-terpyridine compounds bearing hydrogen (L1), methyl (L2), methylsulfonyl (L3), chloro (L4), bromo (L5) and iodo (L6) were prepared and characterized by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, IR, elemental analysis and single crystal X-ray diffraction. All the compounds exhibit interesting photoluminescence properties in the solid state and solution. In vitro data demonstrate that all of them show higher antiproliferative activities than cisplatin against three human carcinoma cell lines, A549, Eca-109 and MCF-7. Compound 3 exhibits the lowest IC50 value (2.298 μM) against A549 cell lines, which is 2.963 μM for 4 against Eca-109 and 1.830 μM for 1 against MCF-7. For silver halogen-substituted terpyridine compounds, their anticancer activities decrease following the sequence of –Cl, –Br, and –I substituents. The comparison results show that their anticancer activity is significantly higher than that of their free ligands. The DNA interaction was studied by fluorescence titration, circular dichroism spectroscopy and molecular modeling methods. Spectrophotometric results reveal that the compounds have strong affinity binding with DNA as intercalators and molecular docking studies indicate that the binding is contributed by the π–π stacking and hydrogen bonds. The DNA binding ability of the complexes has been correlated with their anticancer activities, which could potentially provide a new rationale for the future design of terpyridine-based metal complexes with antitumor potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]