Search

To explore the role of microRNA-1266 in colorectal cancer (CRC) and its underlying mechanism.The expression level of microRNA-1266 in 48 CRC tissues and paracancerous tissues was detected by quantitative Real-time-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The relationship between microRNA-1266 expression and basic characteristics of CRC patients was analyzed. The effect of microRNA-1266 on the viability of CRC cells was detected by cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) assay. Subsequently, a potential target gene for microRNA-1266 was predicted through bioinformatics. Finally, the binding condition between microRNA-1266 and the target gene was verified by RNA binding protein immunoprecipitation (RIP) and luciferase reporter gene assay, respectively.MicroRNA-1266 was lowly expressed in 48 cases of CRC tissues than that of paracancerous tissues. Clinical data demonstrated that microRNA-1266 expression was correlated to tumor size and TNM of CRC patients. Knockdown of microRNA-1266 promoted proliferation of CRC cells. FTO was predicted to be the target gene for microRNA-1266, which was negatively regulated by microRNA-1266.MicroRNA-1266 is lowly expressed in CRC tissues than that of paracancerous tissues. Lowly expressed microRNA-1266 promotes the occurrence and progression of CRC by directly targeting FTO.

The influences of filler size and content on the properties (thermal conductivity, impact strength and tensile strength) of Al2O3/high density polyethylene (HDPE) composites are studied. Thermal conductivity and tensile strength of the composites increase with the decrease of particle size. The dependence of impact strength on the particle size is more complicated. The SEM micrographs of the fracture surface show that Al2O3 with small particle size is generally more effi- cient for the enhancement of the impact strength, while the 100 nm particles prone to aggregation due to their high surface energy deteriorate the impact strength. Composite filled with Al2O3 of 0.5 µm at content of 25 vol% show the best synthetic properties. It is suggested that the addition of nano-Al2O3 to HDPE would lead to good performance once suitably dis- persed.

In the new era, the Northeast power grid is facing a series of opportunities and challenges. In this paper, the strategy of "complementary", "transmission" and "mutual benefit" coordinated development of Northeast China Power Grid and national energy grid is formulated based on the relevant national policy planning; Considering the difference of unique geographical location, natural resources, human resources, technology and other factors of the northeast and other areas; taking into account the development situation and future development needs of all regions, formed a coordinated development strategy layout, covering the unified planning, new energy development, peaking capacity construction, power substitution and talent support. It is beneficial to improve the efficiency of the national energy allocation and utilization, and to solve the practical problems faced by the power grid, so as to realize the coordinated development of the Northeast Power Grid and the national energy grid.

This paper describes the use of a new distributed middleware technology ‘Web Services’ in the proposed Healthcare Information System (HIS) to address the issue of system interoperability raised from existing Healthcare Information systems. With the development of HISs, hospitals and healthcare institutes have been building their own HISs for processing massive healthcare data, such as, systems built up for hospitals under the NHS (National Health Service) to manage patients’ records. Nowadays many healthcare providers are willing to integrate their systems’ functions and data for information sharing. This has raised concerns in data transmission, data security and network limitation. Among these issues, system and language interoperability are one of most obvious issues since data and application integration is not an easy task due to differences in programming languages, system platforms, Database Management Systems (DBMS) used within different systems. As a new distributed middleware technology, Web service brings an ideal solution to the issue of system and language interoperability. Web service has been approved to be very successful in many commercial applications (e.g. Amazon.com, Dell computer, etc.), however it is different to healthcare information system. As the result, Web Service-based Integrated Healthcare Information System (WSIHIS) is proposed to address the interoperability issue of existing HISs but also to introduce this new technology into the healthcare environment.

Investigation of growth and physiology of scion on various interstocks to drought stress is a valuable process for apple drought-tolerance stock selection. In this attempt, the ‘Fuji’ apple cultivar grafted on six dwarfing interstocks, including of M series (M26, M9-T337), CG series (CG24) and SH series (SH1, SH6 and SH40) on Malus hupehensis var. Pingyiensis Jiang rootstock were maintained as normal (−10 to-20 Kpa) (control), moderate (−30 to-40 Kpa) and severe drought (−50 to-60 Kpa) stress levels. After 50 days treatment, comprehensive evaluation by subordinate function value (SF) was employed based on trunk growth, net photosynthetic rate, leaf water potential etc., and drought tolerance of ‘Fuji’ apple was ranked as following interstocks: SH6 > SH40 > SH1> M9-T337 > M26 > CG24. Moreover, the determination of ‘Fuji’ apple in responding to drought stress revealed that three antioxidant enzymes (SOD, APX and DHAR) and four genes (DREB2A, ZAT10, SOD1, APX1) constitute the putative key components for drought regulation.

Background: Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is a neuropeptide that has been demonstrated to produce anxiolytic effects when administered centrally. To examine the hypothesis that NPY might play a role in alcohol-seeking behavior, this study took advantage of the genetic differences of the alcohol-preferring (P) rats and alcohol-nonpreferring (NP) rats, as well as the high alcohol-drinking (HAD) rats and low alcohol-drinking (LAD) rats, in voluntary alcohol consumption to examine if NPY neurons in the brains differ between these selected lines. Method: The NPY immunoreactivity (NPY-I) was measured using an established radioimmunohisto-chemical assay in discrete brain structures including the paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus (PVN), arcuate nucleus (ARC), and central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA). Result: The quantitative data indicated that there was more NPY-I in the PVN and ARC of P rats than NP rats, whereas there was less NPY-I in the PVN and ARC of HAD rats than LAD rats. However, the NPY-I in the CeA was less in both the P and HAD rats than in the NP and LAD rats, respectively. Therefore, the data indicate that there are innate differences in the NPY-I in the brain between selectively bred rats with high and low alcohol preference. Conclusion: Because both P rats and HAD rats have high alcohol preference, the disparate finding between these two lines of rats suggests that the hypothalamic NPY neurons are probably not associated with alcohol preference. In contrast, consistent findings in the CeA of both P rats and HAD rats suggest that NPY in the CeA of P and HAD rats may contribute to the regulation of alcohol consumption. This is substantiated by a recent report showing that NPY-knockout mice drink significantly more ethanol, and transgenic mice that overexpress the NPY gene drink less alcohol, than wild-type mice. Together, the findings support the notion that NPY agonists that would enhance NPY function in the amygdala might be useful for the treatment of anxiety and alcoholism.

In January 2013, Beijing experienced several serious haze events. To achieve a better understanding of the characteristics, sources and processes of aerosols during this month, an Aerodyne High-Resolution Time-of-Flight Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (HR-ToF-AMS) was deployed at an urban site between 1 January and 1 February 2013 to obtain the size-resolved chemical composition of non-refractory submicron particles (NR-PM1). During this period, the mean measured NR-PM1 mass concentration was 87.4 μg m-3 and was composed of organics (49.8%), sulfate (21.4%), nitrate (14.6%), ammonium (10.4%), and chloride (3.8%). Moreover, inorganic matter, such as sulfate and nitrate comprised an increasing fraction of the NR-PM1 load as NR-PM1 loading increased, denoting their key roles in particulate pollution during this month. The average size distributions of the species were all dominated by an accumulation mode peaking at approximately 600 nm in vacuum aerodynamic diameter and organics characterized by an additional smaller size (∼200 nm). Elemental analyses showed that the average O/C, H/C, and N/C (molar ratio) of organic matter were 0.34, 1.44 and 0.015, respectively, corresponding to an OM/OC ratio (mass ratio of organic matter to organic carbon) of 1.60. Positive matrix factorization (PMF) analyses of the high-resolution organic mass spectral dataset differentiated the organic aerosol into four components, i.e., oxygenated organic aerosols (OOA), cooking-related (COA), nitrogen-containing (NOA) and hydrocarbon-like (HOA), which on average accounted for 40.0, 23.4, 18.1 and 18.5% of the total organic mass, respectively. Back trajectory clustering analyses indicated that the WNW air masses were associated with the highest NR-PM1 pollution during the campaign. Aerosol particles in southern air masses were especially rich in inorganic and oxidized organic species, whereas northern air masses contained a large fraction of primary species.

A resonant tunneling mechanism of electron tunneling through a quantum dot is proposed. It is found that the conductance shows (1) an approximate periodic oscillation structure for a large occupation number of electrons in the dot and (2) a “shell” structure for a small occupation number. A pair structure reflected by the even- and odd-occupation number is revealed in peak heights and line widths as well as separations between adjacent peaks of the oscillations. These predictions are in excellent agreement with experimental measurements.

7th Annual Oxford International Conference on the Science of Botanicals/4th Interim Meeting of the American-Society-of-Pharmacognosy -- APR 12-16, 2008 -- Univ Mississippi, Oxford, MS

Neuropeptide Y (NPY) is a neuropeptide that has been demonstrated to produce anxiolytic effects when administered centrally. To examine the hypothesis that NPY might play a role in alcohol-seeking behavior, this study took advantage of the genetic differences of the alcohol-preferring (P) rats and alcohol-nonpreferring (NP) rats, as well as the high alcohol-drinking (HAD) rats and low alcohol-drinking (LAD) rats, in voluntary alcohol consumption to examine if NPY neurons in the brains differ between these selected lines.The NPY immunoreactivity (NPY-I) was measured using an established radioimmunohistochemical assay in discrete brain structures including the paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus (PVN), arcuate nucleus (ARC), and central nucleus of the amygdala (CeA).The quantitative data indicated that there was more NPY-I in the PVN and ARC of P rats than NP rats, whereas there was less NPY-I in the PVN and ARC of HAD rats than LAD rats. However, the NPY-I in the CeA was less in both the P and HAD rats than in the NP and LAD rats, respectively. Therefore, the data indicate that there are innate differences in the NPY-I in the brain between selectively bred rats with high and low alcohol preference.Because both P rats and HAD rats have high alcohol preference, the disparate finding between these two lines of rats suggests that the hypothalamic NPY neurons are probably not associated with alcohol preference. In contrast, consistent findings in the CeA of both P rats and HAD rats suggest that NPY in the CeA of P and HAD rats may contribute to the regulation of alcohol consumption. This is substantiated by a recent report showing that NPY-knockout mice drink significantly more ethanol, and transgenic mice that overexpress the NPY gene drink less alcohol, than wild-type mice. Together, the findings support the notion that NPY agonists that would enhance NPY function in the amygdala might be useful for the treatment of anxiety and alcoholism.

A national system of infectious disease surveillance was established in 1959 in China. Now it consists of three subunits, namely, national disease reporting system (NDRS), nationwide disease surveillance points (DSPs), and surveillance network for specific infectious diseases. There are 35 notifiable infectious diseases, which are divided into Classes A, B, and C. The functions of the surveillance include explaining the natural history of infectious diseases, describing the distribution of case occurrence, triggering disease-control effort, monitoring epidemic of infectious diseases during natural disasters, predicting and controlling epidemics and providing the base of policy adjustment.

Recent epidemiological observations have indicated that the role of Helicobacter pylori (HP) infection in the pathogenesis of gastric cancer is an important but unresolved issue. We used the polymerase chain reaction, a sensitive and specific assay, to detect the HP infection in gastric biopsy specimens and examined the correlations between HP infection and point mutation at 12 codon of H-ras oncogene, overexpression of ras p21 and DNA content. The results showed that the mutation rate of H-ras oncogene is higher in the group with HP infection than in those without HP infection. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that HP infection is associated with the increased expression of ras p21 protein, which suggested that HP infection increased the risk of ras oncogene activation. It is also noted that a significant relationship between infection with HP and the increase of DNA content and s% phase cells, indicated that rapid turnover of cells resulting from infection injury increases the risk of DNA damage.

Although there were many reports on gastric emptying in patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) in western country, there was no scientific paper about it in Chinese. In 22 cases of GERD, diagnosed by clinical manifestations, endoscopy, histology and 24-hour pH monitoring in the distal portion of esophagus, gastric liquid emptying was measured by using absorption test. The results suggested that the mean time to reach the peak of the serum paracetamol level after taking 500ml water was 34.02 +/- 9.09 min. in 13 healthy adults and 51.14 +/- 23.35 min. in 22 cases of GERD. The difference between the two groups was significant (P0.02). Among these 22 patients, 12(54.54%) had delayed gastric emptying, 1 rapid and 9 normal. Our data confirmed that gastric liquid emptying was delayed in some patients with GERD.

Using real-time ultrasonography, we monitored gastric emptying indirectly in 26 cases of non-ulcer dyspepsia (NUD) and 13 healthy adults by determining the anteroposterior gastric measurement of a single section of the stomach in the corpus fundus immediately after drinking 500 ml water and then every 10 min. for five times. The average time for 50% gastric emptying in NUD patients (36.46 +/- 13.13, x +/- s) was longer than that in healthy adults (23.54 +/- 5.93), but the half time of gastric emptying in male with NUD was not significantly different as compared with that in male controls and female patients of NUD.

The effects of beta-agkistrodotoxin (beta-AgTX) on synaptic transmission of the toad sympathetic ganglia were investigated by intracellular recording techniques. Superfusion of beta-AgTX (30 microgram/ml, 5-15 min) reversibly inhibited the cholinergic fast excitatory postsynaptic potential (f-EPSP, n = 16) and the fast components of acetylcholine (ACh) potential induced by micropressure administration of ACh (n = 24). Comparison of beta-AgTX effect in the same cell group showed significantly different inhibition rates on f-EPSP (77.2 +/- 27.7%) and ACh potential (25.5 +/- 17.5%) (n = 6, P less than 0.01, F test). During application of beta-AgTX (30 or 50 micrograms/ml) for 15-30 min, no detectable change was found in non-cholinergic late slow EPSPs (n = 22). The results suggest that beta-AgTX selectively inhibits the cholinergic transmission of the toad sympathetic ganglia by both presynaptic and postsynaptic mechanism.

Hydrogen peroxide contrast hepatosonography (HPCH), a new technique, was developed for liver examination. On examination, 5-10 ml of 2-3% hydrogen peroxide was injected into the rectum through a dual-channel rubber tube. When hydrogen peroxide passed through the mucosa into the portal vein, the fast flowing contrast echoes were seen, and the liver parenchyma was covered by enhanced echoes. A total of 297 subjects were examined by HPCH with a successful contrast rate of 95.6%. In normal subjects, dense contrast echoes were visible throughout the liver. But in patients with hepatoma, hemangioma, cyst and abscess, contrast echo defects were noted. We conclude that HPCE is of great value in the differentiation of space-occupying lesions and measurement of portal circulation time and blood flow velocity in spite of its untoward reactions.

8026 Background: ONTAK®(Dd), a genetically engineered fusion protein combines the enzymatically active domain of diphtheria toxin with the sequence of interleukin-2 (IL-2), designed to target IL-2 receptor expressing malignancies. Dd received FDA accelerated approval for the treatment of CTCL in patients with the CD25 component of the IL-2 receptor. Methods: The confirmatory placebo- controlled L4389–11 phase III trial evaluated 9 and 18μg/kg/d Dd in 144 patients with CD25(+) CTCL. Patients (=3 prior treatments, stages Ia - III) received Dd or placebo IV for up to 8 cycles, consisting of Dd once daily for 5 days every 3 weeks. Tumor burden in skin, blood and lymph nodes and a physician's global (PGA) were assessed relative to baseline and before every treatment cycle beginning with cycle 2. Confirmation of tumor response required two more consecutive cycles (3 observations). Investigator assessments were ratified by an independent Drug Evaluation Review Committee. Results: Initial analysis of activity and benefit shown below. Both Dd treatment arms were greatly superior to placebo in a dose dependent fashion. Population demographics were the same across treatment arms (median age 59 years, 55% male). Randomization was stratified by disease status at baseline, 67% were = stage IIa, 33% were =stage IIb. Response between stage groups within each arm did not differ significantly. Many responses were confirmed after 5 or more cycles. AEs were similar to those in previous Dd studies. The only significantly different Grade 3/4 adverse event was nausea (2% in Placebo and 15% in 18μg/kg/d). No differences in serious adverse events among treatment arms were observed. The frequency of AEs and SAEs markedly decrease after the first two cycles of treatment. Conclusions: This is the largest randomized, placebo controlled trial conducted in CTCL, providing clear evidence for efficacy and clinical benefit for Dd. No significant financial relationships to disclose. [Table: see text]

7227 Background: Bexarotene is a selective modulator of retinoid X nuclear receptors (RXRs), which form heterodimers with many other nuclear receptors playing a critical role in cell growth, differentiation, and apoptosis. Loss of RXRs is seen in many advanced tumors, including NSCLC and higher RXR levels in NSCLC lung biopsies (stages I-III) have been correlated with longer overall survival. Two large first line NSCLC Phase III trials reported at ASCO 2005 (SPIRIT I and II) showed that while no benefit in overall survival was seen adding bexarotene to two chemo regimens, a large (36%) subpopulation of patients in both trials that had high grade hypertriglyceridemia in response to bexarotene had significantly longer survival. A retrospective analysis was conducted to evaluate the baseline characteristics of these patients and to examine the level of expression of RXR and one of its partners (PPARγ) in lung tumor tissue biopsies obtained from a subgroup of patients in both studies. Methods: RXRs (α,β,γ) and PPARγ expression levels in lung tumor tissue from patients in SPIRIT I and II trials (stage IIIB/IV) taken prior to study entry were assessed by Q-PCR analysis of RNA isolated from microdissected lung tumor tissue biopsies. Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier survival estimation were used for statistical evaluations. Results: In an initial subset of 41 patients, RXRβ expression in lung tumor showed positive correlation with survival. High RXRβ = longer survival (median survival 438 days), low RXR shorter (MS = 317). Treatment with bexarotene increased the differences (RXRβ Hi, MS = 627 days; RXRβ low = 211 days). PPARγ showed a negative correlation with survival and those patients with RXRβ Hi/PPARγ low ratios had the longest MS (627 days vs. 226 days for the RXRβ low/PPARγ high group), a difference that was magnified by bexarotene treatment. Conclusions: RXRβ expression level correlates with a positive survival in late stage NSCLC while PPARγ shows negative correlation. Bexarotene treatment enhances the survival differences, supporting an involvement of triglyceride and lipid metabolism as regulated by these two key nuclear receptors in the longer survival seen in the 215 patients in the high triglyceride subgroup. [Table: see text]

7137 Background: Bexarotene activates RXR receptors regulating cell proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis and many aspects of lipid metabolism. Both SPIRIT I and II trials (ASCO 2005) showed that a large (36%) subgroup of bexarotene-treated patients showing high sensitivity to hypertriglyceridemia had a significantly longer survival in both studies. This subgroup included males, smokers, stage IV and weight loss, factors associated with poorer survival. A recent study in retinoid-treated patients revealed those developing high hypertriglyceridemia, as well as their parents, have a familial predisposition to hyperlipidemia and the metabolic syndrome (Ann Intern Med, 2002, 136:582). We evaluated baseline and in-treatment patient characteristics in relation to triglyceride responses and overall survival after bexarotene treatment to further extend that observation to NSCLC patients. Methods: A pooled analysis of 595 patients treated with bexarotene in SPIRIT I and II trials assessed factors related to metabolic syndrome (BMI, HDL, LDL and Total cholesterol [T-chol], T-chol/HDL ratio, triglycerides, glucose, blood pressure) at baseline and during treatment at the time of high-triglyceridemia. Individual and composite risk factor scores were evaluated by logistic and Cox-regression analysis in two subgroups, e.g., Responders (high trigs, long survival) and Non-responders (low trigs, shorter survival). Results: Among in-treatment risk factors, Responders (N = 215) had significantly higher (p < 0.0001) BMI, trigs, T-chol, T-chol/HDL ratio and lower HDL (p < 0.0001) than Non-responders (N = 380). A composite risk score (the sum of the individual in-treatment dichotomous risk scores) analysis also showed a significantly (p < 0.0001) higher score for metabolic risk factors in the Responder/longer survival subgroup. Hazard ratio analysis by Cox-regression showed a 13% survival benefit for each composite score increase. Conclusions: Baseline and in-treatment triglycerides and other key metabolic syndrome factors are important predictors and contributors to the beneficial survival impact of bexarotene in this important subgroup of NSCLC patients. [Table: see text]

A field study in northeastern Inner Mongolia, People's Republic of China, in June of 1985 demonstrated a spotted fever group rickettsiosis. Two strains of spotted fever group rickettsiae were isolated. One strain was obtained from the blood of a patient with an eschar, regional lymphadenopathy, and history of a recent tick bite. The other strain originated from ova of ticks, Dermacentor nuttalli. These represent the second isolate of a spotted fever group rickettsia from a human and the first isolate from tick ova in the People's Republic of China. Antibodies to these rickettsiae were demonstrated by indirect immunofluorescence in the sera of 4% of healthy children and 34% of healthy human adults, in 58% of sheep, and in 76% of cattle in the same location. Hemolymph test revealed rickettsiae in 6 of 36 D. nuttalli examined.

Conventional multiple description coding (MDC) is a source coding technique which provides resilience against packet loss. On the other hand, the correlation introduced between descriptions can be used to combat bit errors as well. While the latter feature of MDC has been attested and exploited in prior work, only few attempts have been made to design MDC with higher bit error resilience ability. This thesis makes some progress in the latter direction by addressing the problem of robust (i.e., bit error resilient) index assignment (IA) design for two description scalar quantizers. Our approach is to start from an initial IA which is known to be good for the conventional two description problem, and then apply permutations to indices in each description to increase a minimum Hamming distance-like performance measure. The criterion of increasing the minimum Hamming distance between valid index pairs (dmin), has been considered in prior work, however an efficient IA construction was presented only for the case of dmin = 2 and low redundancy. The contribution of this thesis is the following. For the scenario when one description is known to be error free, a new measure for IA robustness is proposed, which is termed minimum side Hamming distance (dside,min). This quantity is defined as the minimum Hamming distance between valid indices of one description for fixed index of the other description. It is further shown that the problem of robust permutations design under the new criterion is closely connected to the anti-bandwidth problem in a certain graph derived from a hypercube. Leveraging this connection, permutations achieving dside,min = 2 are proposed for all redundancy levels. Furthermore, for general values of dside,min, a simple construction of permutations achieving dside,min is presented, based on channel codes of appropriate block length and rate, and with minimum distance dside,min + 1, respectively, dside,min, for two types of initial IA (diagonal, respectively, square-based). The application of this result to achieve IA with dside,min = 3 is further discussed for a wide range of redundancy levels. Finally, for the scenario when both descriptions may carry bit errors, simple constructions of permutations achieving dmin = 3 are proposed for the high redundancy case. Master of Applied Science (MASc)