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Osteoporosis is a systemic skeletal disease that can easily lead to bone fractures. Berberine has been shown to be effective in treating osteoporosis. This study was conducted to identify the potential mechanism of berberine in treating this complaint. We screened potential targets of berberine and identified the osteoporosis-related differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the microarray dataset GSE56815. Protein–protein interaction (PPI) network construction, hub targets identification, and pathway enrichment were carried out to find the potential targets. Molecular docking and molecular dynamics studies were performed to verify the combination of berberine with its treatment-related central targets. In addition, SwissADME preliminarily evaluated the physicochemical properties of berberine. Through data mining, 23 osteoporosis-related targets of berberine were selected. PPI and module analyses suggested that AKT1, MAPK1, ESR1, AR, TP53, and PTGS2 are the core targets of berberine. Docking and molecular dynamics studies showed that berberine could stably bind to core proteins to form a protein–ligand complex. The enrichment analysis showed that the estrogen signaling pathway and thyroid hormone signaling pathway play important roles in curing osteoporosis. To sum up, berberine primarily acts on AKT1, MAPK1, ESR1, AR, TP53, and PTGS2, mainly regulating the estrogen and thyroid hormone signaling pathways to treat osteoporosis in a multi-target, multi-pathway, and multi-system manner.

The photo-excited electrons and holes move in the same direction in the diffusion and in the opposite direction in the drift under an electric field. Therefore, the contribution to the inverse spin Hall current of photo-excited electrons and holes in the diffusion regime is different to that in the drift regime under electric field. By comparing the classical Hall effect with the inverse spin Hall effect in both diffusion and drift regime, we develop an optical method to distinguish the contributions of electrons and holes in the inverse spin Hall effect. It is found that the contribution of the inverse spin Hall effect of electrons and holes in an InGaAs/AlGaAs un-doped multiple quantum well is approximately equal at room temperature.

Emerging evidence has demonstrated that the aberrant expression of histone-modifying enzymes such as histone demethylases contributes to gastric carcinogenesis and progression. The role of KDM4B in cancer progression has been gradually revealed. However, the underlying mechanisms regulating gastric cancer metastasis of KDM4B remain unclear. In the present study we determined KDM4B expression in gastric cancer and its biologic function in vitro and in vivo. We found that KDM4B expression was significantly increased in most gastric cancer tissues compared with the adjacent normal tissues. Upregulated expression of KDM4B in human gastric cancer was correlated with poor prognosis. In vitro, KDM4B overexpression in AGS cells promoted cell invasion, whereas knockdown of KDM4B inhibited cell invasion. Furthermore, KDM4B overexpression also promoted tumor metastasis in vivo. Mechanistically, KDM4B upregulated miR-125b expression and activated Wnt signaling pathway. More important, miR-125b partially mediated KDM4B-induced activation of Wnt signaling. Finally, we demonstrated that KDM4B promoted gastric cancer cell invasion in vitro and cancer metastasis in vivo, at least in part, by upregulating miR-125b expression. These data provided novel insights on the role of KDM4B-driven gastric cancer metastasis and indicated that KDM4B may be served as a potential target for gastric cancer.

Aim To study the dominant role of parasympathetic inputs at cellular level of baroreflex afferent pathway and underlying mechanism in neurocontrol of blood pressure regulation. Methods Whole-cell patch-clamp and animal study were conducted. Results For the first time, we demonstrated the spontaneous activities from resting membrane potential in myelinated A- and Ah-type baroreceptor neurons (BRNs, the 1st-order), but not in unmyelinated C-types, using vagus-nodose slice of adult female rats. These data were further supported by the notion that the spontaneous synaptic currents could only be seen in the pharmacologically and electrophysiologically defined myelinated A- and Ah-type baroreceptive neurons (the 2nd-order) of NTS using brainstem slice of adult female rats. The greater frequency and the larger amplitude of the spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) compared with the inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) were only observed in Ah-types. The ratio of EPSCs:IPSCs was estimated at 3:1 and higher. These results confirmed that the afferent-specific spontaneous activities were generated from baroreflex afferent pathway in female-specific subpopulation of myelinated Ah-type BRNs in nodose and baroreceptive neurons in NTS, which provided a novel insight into the dominant role of sex-specific baroreflex-evoked parasympathetic drives in retaining a stable and lower blood pressure status in healthy subjects, particularly in females. Conclusion The data from current investigations establish a new concept for the role of Ah-type baroreceptor/baroreceptive neurons in controlling blood pressure stability and provide a new pathway for pharmacological intervention for hypertension and cardiovascular diseases.

Traditional software development method will bring code tangling, code scattered and many other issues. Aspect-oriented programming came into being under this circumstance. AOP is a new programming paradigm which is independent of all the other programming languages. The scale and complexity of software systems increase continually. Efficiently control the complexity of software systems has already become a vitally important issue which needs to be addressed. In the modular design and implementation of software, cross cut always arise between primary functional modules and non-functional modules. This paper proposes a method to model and verify an UML activity diagram based aspect-oriented programming which enhance the capability of dealing with non-function requirements.

Melanoma is a malignant tumor of the melanocytes. microRNAs (miRNAs) are emerging as important regulators of cancer-related processes. A thorough understanding of miRNAs in melanoma progression is important for developing new therapeutic targets. miRNA expression was detected by quantitative PCR. In vitro, MTT assay, colony formation assay, invasion assay and flow cytometry analysis were performed to test the effect of miR-573 on melanoma cells. The effect of miR-573 in vivo was validated using a murine xenograft model. Using quantitative PCR, we found that the expression levels of miR-573 were lower in melanoma tissues and cell lines compared to normal skin tissues. miR-573 upregulation inhibited melanoma cell proliferation and invasion, and overexpression of melanoma cell adhesion molecule (MCAM) could alleviate the effect of miR-573 on melanoma cells. In vivo, miR-573 overexpression groups showed lower rates of tumor growth compared with the control group. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that the elevated MCAM expression due to miR-573 reduction is essential in melanoma initiation and progression.

In recent years, the Flex technology has been widely used. Adobe Flex application framework designed to start introduction of the Cairngorm framework. The framework with the MVC design pattern to simplify the application development model, specification of the application development process, and pay more attention to the business logic, the author after careful study of the entire framework, the control layer of the Cairngorm framework is made some improvements to the improved version of the Cairngorm framework. The improved version of the Cairngorm framework is more suitable for Web application development and maintenance.

During processing database query or dealing with huge amounts of data, the conventional query method is not only a waste of resources but also may perform repeated or useless operations which may cause the database overburdened even. For solving the problem of time-consuming in conventional database query, this paper presented a more convenient solution to the problem in conventional database queries. This paper constructed an XML document to simulate the database and transformed the database query into the XML queries. Experiments showed that speed can be significantly improved for database query and better results can be obtained.

A-type baroreceptor neurons in rats Tao Ban , Jin-Ling Yu , Yu-Yao Zhang , Pan-Xiang Cao , Sheng-Zhi Liu , Xiao-Long Wang , Li-Na Ba , Tian-Ci Zhang , Xin-Jing Guo , Xue Yu , Guo-Fen Qiao ⁎, Bai-Yan Li a,⁎ a Department of Pharmacology, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China b Key Laboratory of Cardiovascular Research of Ministry of Education, Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China c Department of Anatomy, Histology, and Embryology, Heilongjiang University of Chinese Medicine, Harbin, China

In this paper, we present a new model-Nonlocal PM Model after combining the Nonlocal Means (NLM) filter and the PM-equation model. The decay parameter h acts as a filtering parameter and the standard deviation a of Gaussian kernel G a (·); both are very important parameters in the Nonlocal Means Filter, and the gradient modulus threshold k that controls the conduction are obtained by setting the maximum of the peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR in db) as the goal in the numerical experiment of the Nonlocal PM Model. The experimental results show the new method has better performance in image denoising.

Previous research has suggested that Ephrin receptor A3 (EphA3) plays signaling roles in the processes of inflammation by regulating lymphocyte migration and proliferation. In this study, we investigated whether the EphA3 gene polymorphism was associated with disease progression of chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. The EphA3 variant rs9310117 was genotyped in 1245 unrelated Han Chinese HBV carriers including 800 cases and 445 controls. χ(2) test was used to examine the difference in allele frequencies and genotype distributions between groups. The association between the polymorphism and disease progression of HBV infection was conducted by unconditional logistic regression analysis. Statistical analysis revealed that the genetic variant was significantly associated with the occurrence of chronic severe hepatitis B (CSHB). We observed that subjects bearing at least one T allele (C/T or T/T genotype) had a decreased susceptibility to chronic severe hepatitis B compared with those bearing C/C genotype (P = 0.003, odds ratio = 0.560; 95% confidence interval, 0.381-0.824, recessive model). Genotype C/T had also been confirmed to protect subjects from suffering chronic severe hepatitis B (P = 0.001, odds ratio = 0.498; 95% confidence interval, 0.330-0.752, additive model). Our results suggest that the genetic alteration at EphA3 locus plays a role in the occurrence of chronic severe hepatitis B.

The aim of this study is to verify the feasibility of another option: transumbilical endoscopic cholecystectomy by using the trichannel trocar technique. Eight domestic pigs were submitted to transumbilical endoscopic cholecystectomy by using the trichannel trocar technique. A fine grasper of 2 mm in diameter was inserted through a small skin incision on the right upper abdomen for grasping the gallbladders. The natural scar of the umbilicus was restored after extract of the specimen. All the gallbladders were removed successfully without severe bleeding during dissection, intraoperative, and postoperative complications. Postmortem examination revealed that the gallbladder fossa was clean, the clips on the cystic duct and artery were secure, and neither bile nor blood leakage was found at the operative field. The feasibility and safety of transumbilical endoscopic cholecystectomy are demonstrated by this study. It is possible to use this approach in patients with gallbladder diseases.

To study the effect of sufentanil on acute lung injury induced by hemorrhagic shock in rabbits.Fifty-four healthy rabbits were randomly divided into three groups: control group,with only incision of trachea; model group, hemorrhagic shock was produced according to modified Wiggers' method; sufentanil group, intravenous injection of sufentanil at 0.02 microg x kg(-1) x h(-1) after hemorrhagic shock. To all the rabbits, intravenous Ringer lactate solution was given in an amount of 5 ml x kg(-1) x h(-1). Mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR) and plasma tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) were determined before shock, 1, 2, 3 and 4 hours after resuscitation. Malondialdehyde (MDA) and water content of lungs were measured 1, 2 and 4 hours after resuscitation.At same time points, MAP and HR in sufentanil group and model group were lower than that in control group (P0.05) but contents of TNF-alpha in serum, MDA in lung tissue and water content of lungs were elevated gradually. The degree of decrease or increase was less obvious in sufentanil than in model group (P0.05 or P0.01).Hemorrhagic shock could increase arterial plasma TNF-alpha content with lung injury. Sufentanil could alleviate acute lung injury induced by hemorrhagic shock in rabbits.