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Transnational education has attained increasing significance at the K-12 school level. This trend is seen in China with the recent expansion of offshore branch campuses that are exported from major Anglophone countries, most notably the UK. In recent years, many British private schools have set up franchised branches in China’s international school market. This paper investigates how these franchised schools manage to forge a distinctive institutional identity in China, using document analysis of 28 British school brands and case studies of two schools. Informed by the theories of the experience economy and commodity-sign, this paper explores how a “British school experience” is created through the reproduction of particular cultural objects and rituals, and is transformed into a new form of commodity prized for its sign value. I argue that this phenomenon represents an advanced stage of commodification in international schooling. This paper also discusses the internal contradictions between cultural commodification and education, as well as the external challenges that have emerged as the schools confront a changing policy context in China’s private education sector.

The theranostic applications of nanoparticles are referred to their potential for diagnosis and treatment of a disease simultaneously. In the management of cancer, theranostic nanoparticles exhibit a promising potential and thus making them attractive for research. Recent nanotechnology platform provides new methods and formulations that involve the fabrication of contrast agents and pharmaceutically active molecules within a nanocarrier that in turn helps in monitoring the accumulation of therapeutic cargoes at the target site. In real-time, the detection of contrast agents is made possible via noninvasive imaging techniques such as positron emission, computed and ultrasound tomography. In addition, the therapeutic agent and imaging substances’ efficacy could be enhanced by the surface modification of nanocarriers which ultimately helps in improving the overall treatment. Furthermore, the theranostic modalities of these nanomaterials could be improved by making them multifunctional through modifications such as the attachment of quantum dots, fluorophores, peptides, etc. Similarly, another approach involved in the design of such nanosystems is based on the ability of the delivery system to release its payloads on the contact with tumor microenvironment leading to a sustained release of targeted drugs thus offering reduced toxicity. In the arena of personalized functionalized nanomedicines, theranostic applications of nanocarriers for cancer will offer novel clinical tools via combination of diagnosis and treatment from a single platform.

The total synthesis of antibacterial amycolasporin A, (±) amycolasporins B and C and their analogues (18, 19, 30a and 30d–30f) was introduced; 30d obviously inhibited bacterial biofilm formation and promoted intracellular ROS release.

In order to enhance J c in (Ba,Na)Fe2As2 wires and tapes further by improving texturing, we examined the following approaches; (1) Ag-sheathed HIP tapes, (2) AgSn-sheathed cold-pressed tapes, and (3) multifilamentary HIP wires with each filament having tape-like cross section. In addition, we attempted to increase I c by fabricating (Ba,Na)Fe2As2 wires with larger core areas, and constructed a small demo coil using one of these wires with length up to 9 m. J c characteristics of these new wires and the performance of the demo coil with and without an electrical insulation are reported.

This paper provides the first Liapunov coefficient formula of 3D Lotka-Volterra equations. This formula gives applications to stability of positive equilibrium and to detecting sub/super criticality of Hopf bifurcation. For 3D competitive Lotka-Volterra equations, combining this formula with the Poincare-Bendixson theorem, we obtain criteria on multiplicity of limit cycles among Zeeman's classes 27-31, and present a series of examples to admit at least two limit cycles, which are rigorously proved by the first Liapunov coefficient formula, rather than by symbolic computation using Maple. A new Hopf bifurcation that all 2 × 2 principal minors of the community matrix are positive is found, and numerical simulation reveals its global limit cycle bifurcations are plenty.

Twenty-three natural jamunone analogues along with a series of jamunone-based derivatives were synthesized and evaluated for their inhibitory effects against breast cancer (BC) MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 cells. The preliminary structure-activity relationship revealed that the length of aliphatic side chain and free phenolic hydroxyl group at the scaffold played a vital role in anti-BC activities and the methyl group on chromanone affected the selectivity of molecules against MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7 cells. Among them, jamunone M (JM) was screened as the most effective anti-triple-negative breast cancer (anti-TNBC) candidate with a high selectivity against BC cells over normal human cells. Mechanistic investigations indicated that JM could induce mitochondria-mediated apoptosis and cause G0/G1 phase arrest in BC cells. Furthermore, JM significantly restrained tumor growth in MDA-MB-231 xenograft mice without apparent toxicity. Interestingly, JM could downregulate phosphatidylinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt pathway by suppressing protein-tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) expression. These findings revealed the potential of JM as an appealing therapeutic drug candidate for TNBC.

International schools in China have enjoyed soaring popularity in recent years. Many of these schools adopt curricular forms and/or school brands originating from the US, UK or Canada, and they bra...

Liberal Studies (LS), a high-stakes senior secondary school subject in Hong Kong, has evoked widespread debate in recent years concerning the curriculum content about Mainland China. Highlighting t...

Our previous studies have confirmed oligopeptides could be meaningful to tea taste and biofunction. As the total content of oligopeptide among different tea types were varied. It is a natural speculation that certain tea processing step could be vital for oligopeptides enrichment. In current study, five types of traditional Chinese tea were produced from the same batch of fresh leaves. Step processing samples were acquired through which to profile the oligopeptides and free amio acids composition change during tea processed. As a result, firstly, withering was the vital step for oligopeptide enrichment, followed by fermentation, yellowing and drying. Secondly, as the enrichment of oligopeptides was often accompanied by the increase of protein amino acids, suggesting certain proteins degradation in fresh leaves could be the main source of oligopeptides. Thirdly, a total of 166 abundant oligopeptides were screened out, through which 14 high degradation protein were also located by protomic approaching.

In ancient China, traditional costumes have an important function of marking the identity of the noble and commoner status hierarchy. Before modern times, the shape, fabric, and color of folk women's clothing were not clearly defined, but they were subject to folklore and had many taboos. The wives of ministers or members of royalty were expected to comport themselves according to their husbands' official status and were forbidden from breaking any restrictions. But in the visual archives of the last feudal dynasty of ancient China, we have astonishing discoveries about the new image of Chinese women in the Qing Dynasty — Artworks of Qing Dynasty women in armor, their historical background, and artistic qualities bring us a lot of unprecedented inspiration and reflection. Based on the textual research on the hierarchical system of armor in the Qing Dynasty, combined with the background of national culture, this paper analyzes that the appearance of the image of female armor in the Qing Dynasty is a politicized performance of the ruling class, and its essence is still the projection of the aesthetic interest of feudal patriarchy.

In this work, both binary and ternary transition metal phosphides (MoP, WP, Ni2P, Fe2P, CoP, NiMoP and CoMoP) were used as potential catalysts for dry reforming of methane (DRM). Moreover, Ni2P, Fe2P, CoP, NiMoP and CoMoP were tested in DRM for the first time. A comparison of various phosphide catalysts identified Mo-based phosphides (MoP, NiMoP and CoMoP) as having much higher DRM activity than phosphides of W, Ni, Fe and Co. It was worth mentioning that CoMoP can show a similar catalytic activity and stability to the Pt/γ-Al2O3 catalyst. The XRD, Raman and SEM results indicated that the resistance to coking, bulk oxidation and sintering of Mo-based phosphides was higher than that of phosphides of metals (W, Ni, Co and Fe). Furthermore, CoMoP exhibited the highest resistance to coking, oxidation and sintering among these phosphide catalysts. It was proposed that both the quantity and location of active sites for CH4 and CO2 dissociation over phosphides were crucial to maintain the oxidation–reduction cycle in DRM.

Violacin A, a chromanone derivative, isolated from a fermentation broth of Streptomyces violaceoruber, has excellent anti-inflammatory potential. Herein, a biogenetically modeled approach to synthesize violacin A and twenty-five analogues was described, which involved the preparation of aromatic polyketide precursor through Claisen condensation and its spontaneous cyclization. The inhibitory effect on nitric oxide (NO) production of all synthetic molecules was evaluated by lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced Raw264.7 cells. The results revealed that introduction of aliphatic amine moieties on C-7 obviously improved the anti-inflammation effect of violacin A, and also the aromatic ether instead of ketone group at side chain was favorable to increase the activity. Among them, analogue 7a and 16d were screened as the most effective anti-inflammatory candidates. Molecular mechanism research revealed that 7a and 16d acquired anti-inflammatory ability due to the inhibition of NF-κB signaling pathway.

With the development of video surveillance in public safety field, there is an increasing research on person re-identification (re-id). In this paper, we address the image-to-video person re-id, in which the probe is an image and the gallery is consists of videos captured by nonoverlapping cameras. Compared with image, video sequence contains more temporal information that can be explored to improve the performance of re-identification system. However, it is challenging to model temporal information in the matching process of image-to-video person re-id. In this paper, we proposed a novel temporally memorized similarity learning neural network for this problem. In specific, the proposed network mainly consisted of two parts, including feature representation sub-network and similarity sub-network. In the first part, we adopted a convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract features from the input image. Given a video sequence of a person, features were first extracted from each its frame by using CNN and further forward to a long shot term memory (LSTM) network to encode the temporal information of video sequence. The outputs of LSTM were concatenated together as the feature vector of video sequences. Finally, the feature vectors of probe image and the video sequence were further forward to the similarity sub-network for distance metric learning. In the proposed framework, the feature representation and the similarity metric learning can be learned and optimized simultaneously. We evaluated the proposed framework on three public person re-id data sets, and the experimental results showed that the proposed approach is effective for the image-to-video person re-id.

Travel information adoption on social media has been acknowledged to be a complex process of both central route (argument quality) and peripheral route (source credibility). However, less effort has been placed on what triggers the persuasive communication process and how it varies. This study aims to examine the impact of technical adequacy (perceived interactivity, perceived personalization, perceived sociability) and users’ social presence on travel information adoption via social media. An extended resultant model from elaboration likelihood model (ELM) is constructed. Data (N=355) were collected from an online survey among Chinese consumers and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) for path analysis and two-way interaction for moderating effect. The results highlighted the role of technical adequacy in predicting both argument quality and source credibility of travel information on social media. The dual routes are correlated and in turn positively influence perceived information usefulness. Meanwhile, the persuasiveness of each route is moderated by individuals’ perception on social presence. Lastly, perceived information usefulness significantly affects travel information adoption. Implications particularly in practice are discussed.

Distinction, Exclusivity and Whiteness, by Pere Ayling, examines how elite Nigerian parents navigate the international education market and specifically seek to use British-style education as a mea...

Hydrogen sensors with high sensitivity, rapid response and low cost are urgently demanded in today’s industry. In this work, we reported our research on the fabrication process and the relevant sensing mechanisms of a TiO2 film based hydrogen sensor which showed an excellent performance at room temperature in air. The sensor, prepared by hydrothermal methods with a seed layer being introduced during the growth of the thin films, exhibited the concentration detection limit as low as 1 ppm and the response time as short as 9 s. Structural analysis revealed that the introduction of the seed layer resulted in a significant improvement in the quality of the TiO2 thin film, which was intimately related to the sensing properties. The dynamical response process was studied and the corresponding sensing mechanisms were analyzed in detail. It was found that, in addition to the generally accepted Schottky barrier mechanism, the adsorption of H2 molecules at (002) surface of the TiO2 thin film played a key role in achieving such a low detection limit and a short response time for the sensor.

Object categories inherently form a hierarchy with different levels of concept abstraction, especially for fine-grained categories. For example, birds (Aves) can be categorized according to a four-level hierarchy of order, family, genus, and species. This hierarchy encodes rich correlations among various categories across different levels, which can effectively regularize the semantic space and thus make prediction less ambiguous. However, previous studies of fine-grained image recognition primarily focus on categories of one certain level and usually overlook this correlation information. In this work, we investigate simultaneously predicting categories of different levels in the hierarchy and integrating this structured correlation information into the deep neural network by developing a novel Hierarchical Semantic Embedding (HSE) framework. Specifically, the HSE framework sequentially predicts the category score vector of each level in the hierarchy, from highest to lowest. At each level, it incorporates the predicted score vector of the higher level as prior knowledge to learn finer-grained feature representation. During training, the predicted score vector of the higher level is also employed to regularize label prediction by using it as soft targets of corresponding sub-categories. To evaluate the proposed framework, we organize the 200 bird species of the Caltech-UCSD birds dataset with the four-level category hierarchy and construct a large-scale butterfly dataset that also covers four level categories. Extensive experiments on these two and the newly-released VegFru datasets demonstrate the superiority of our HSE framework over the baseline methods and existing competitors., Accepted at ACM MM 2018 as oral presentation

Borrelidin, a nitrile containing 18-membered polyketide macrolide, display potent antifungal activity. In this study, a library of borrelidin derivatives were synthesized. Their structures were elucidated by detailed spectroscopic data analysis. The antifungal activity and cytotoxicity of these target compounds were evaluated by broth microdilution and 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-3,5-phenytetrazoliumromide (MTT) methods. Among forty-seven prepared analogues, compound 3b had the inhibitory effect on Candida albicans and Candida parapsilosis (MIC: 50 and 12.5 μg/mL, respectively). Furthermore, compounds 4n and 4r presented better antifungal activity against Aspergillus fumigatus with 12.5 μg/mL MIC value, which were insensitive to borrelidin. Preliminary structure-activity relationships (SAR) revealed that the ester analogues containing fragment -OCH2CH2N- had an important effect on the antifungal activity. Meanwhile, the molecular docking study indicated the carboxyl substituents in BN could provide extra interaction with pathogenic fungal threonyl-tRNA synthetase (ThrRS).

Chinese jasmine tea is a type of flower-scented tea, which is produced by mixing green tea with the Jasminum sambac flower repeatedly. Both the total amount and composition of volatiles absorbed from the Jasminum sambac flower are mostly responsible for its sensory quality grade. This study aims to compare volatile organic compound (VOC) differences in authoritative jasmine tea grade samples. Automatic thermal desorption-gas-chromatography-mass spectrometry (ATD-GC-MS) and electronic nose (E-nose), followed by multivariate data analysis is conducted. Consequently, specific VOCs with a positive or negative correlation to the grades are screened out. Partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) show a satisfactory discriminant effect on rank. It is intriguing to find that the E-nose is good at distinguishing the grade difference caused by VOC concentrations but is deficient in identifying essential aromas that attribute to the unique characteristics of excellent grade jasmine tea.

A concise total synthesis of an exceedingly potent anti-inflammatory agent violacin A as well as the preparation of thirty analogues of this lead from commercially available orcinol are described. Highlights of our synthetic efforts involve Friedel-Crafts acylation, the regioselective etherification and esterification of phenolic hydroxyl groups, and Baker-Venkatamaran rearrangement to form basic skeleton of violacin A. The deprotection reaction with Pd-catalytic was involved to avoid the elimination of the hemiacetal hydroxyl at C2. In addition, all synthetic compounds were screened for anti-inflammatory activity against nitric oxide (NO) production using lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced Raw264.7 cells. A range of violacin A derivatives 11b, 11d, 11f, 12e, 12g, 13g, 17d-g exhibited stronger anti-inflammatory effect than that of violacin A. Notably, halogeno-benzyloxy substituent at C-7 were favourable for anti-inflammatory activities of violacin A derivatives. Additionally, Western blot results indicated halogeno-benzyloxy derivatives inhibited pro-inflammatory cytokines releases correlated with the suppression of NF-κB signaling pathway.

Taking travel information adoption on social media from a dual-route persuasive communication viewpoint, a modified elaboration likelihood model (ELM) predicted by technical adequacy was constructed. An online survey (N = 357) was conducted in China to examine which route (argument quality vs. source credibility) is more effective and how self-disclosure biases their influences on the usefulness of travel information. Derived from Structural Equation Model (SEM) and multi-group analysis, results revealed the significant impact of technical adequacy on both argument quality and source credibility. Source credibility is more effective and positively affects perceived information usefulness, which in turn has a significantly crucial impact on travel information adoption. Contrary to the hypothesis, Chinese users with higher self-disclosure on social media are inclined to weaken the impact of source credibility on travel information usefulness.

In this paper, as the core carrier of information acquisition and application in the future, the Space-ground Integrated Information Network (SGIIN) is play a matter of great concern to the target of high-quality data. For the accurate of data, the study of some data assimilation schemes and applications was introduced. The data assimilation is a set of techniques whereby information from observation systems, and simulation models is combined optimally. The data assimilation in order to get more high-quality data, the purpose of that is quantitative analysis well grounded. Certainly, the data assimilation could be deemed to as a way to optimal control, which is may be the best initial parameters, so that observation and dynamic model to achieved statistical optimally and improved forecast accuracy of the origin model. In recent years, the data assimilation is rapidly becoming prominent in endeavors to exploit Earth Observation for Earth sciences and applications efforts. This paper explains the broad principles of date assimilation, outlining different approaches (optimal interpolation, variational methods, the Kalman Filter, etc.), and pointed out some significant methods in the application and benefits. Then further steps are outlines some hypothetic applications of the data assimilation in the areas of SGIIN system. Finally, summed up some challenges and difficulties for the SGIIN are noted.

Aquaporins (AQPs) are expressed in many different tumor cell types in human. New evidence for the involvement of AQPs in cell migration and proliferation adds AQPs to an expanding list of effectors in tumor biology.The aim of this study was to investigate whether AQP3 expression in the human gastric carcinoma cell lines, AGS and SGC7901, enhances cell migration and proliferation.Here, we showed that AQP3 is expressed in the human gastric cancer cell lines, AGS and SGC7901. The hEGF induced AQP3 expression in a time- and dose-dependent manner and increased gastric cancer cell migration and proliferation. AQP3 knockdown by siRNA inhibited hEGF-induced AQP3 expression and thus cell migration and proliferation. Furthermore, a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MEK)/extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) inhibitor U0126 inhibited hEGF-induced AQP3 expression and cell migration or proliferation.Cultured AGS or SGC7901 cells were treated with human epidermal growth factor (hEGF) and subjected to cell migration assay and cell proliferation assay. The expression or activation level of proteins was analyzed by western blot. AQP3 knockdown was obtained by small interfering (si)RNA.Collectively, our findings provide for the first time that AQP3 plays a critical role in hEGF-induced cancer cell migration and proliferation and that hEGF induces AQP3 expression via ERK signal transduction pathways. These finds provide evidence for a novel role of AQP3 in human gastric carcinoma as a potentially important determinant of tumor growth and spread.

Objective. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which mainly refers to Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is characterized by chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract. Recent reports have demonstrated that exosomes derived from interleukin10 (IL-10)-treated bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (DCs) can reduce the incidence and severity of established collageninduced arthritis (CIA) in mice. Based on the essential role of IL-10 in the development of normal mucosal immunity, we investigated whether exosomes derived from DCs treated with IL-10 (known as IL-10-exosomes) can suppress the trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid (TNBS)-induced colitis. Material and Methods. We used the rat TNBS-induced colitis model to address the therapeutic potential of IL-10-exosomes in vivo. More specifically, a rectal enema of TNBS was administered to Wistar rats, and IL-10-exosomes were injected intraperitoneally on Day 3. Results. In the context of a high level of major histocompatibility complex class II (MHC II) and a low level of co-stimulatory molecule and membrane-bound IL-10 expression, IL-10-exosomes treatment substantially reduced all analyzed clinical, macroscopic, and histopathologic parameters of TNBS-induced colitis. The therapeutic effects of IL-10-exosomes were associated with a down-regulation mRNA expression of IL-2, IFN-g and TNF-a in colon tissues. Importantly, treatment with IL-10-exosomes resulted in a pronounced up-regulation of IL-10mRNA expression in colon tissues and regulatory T cells (Tregs) in Colonic lamina propria. Conclusions. The results suggest that IL-10-exosomes treatment can suppress acute TNBS-induced colitis and may offer a promising new therapeutic strategy for IBD.

Background New evidence for involvement of aquaporins (AQPs) in cell migration and proliferation adds AQPs to an expanding list of effectors in tumor biology. But there is few report concerning the expression and role of AQPs in human gastric carcinogenesis so far. The aim of this current study was to investigate the expression profile of AQPs in human gastric carcinoma and its significance. Methods We screened the expression profile of AQP0 ∼ AQP12 in gastric adenocarcinoma tissues and corresponding normal mucosa from 89 patients with gastric cancer by reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), Western blot analysis and immunochemical assay. The relationship between AQPs expression and clinicopathologic characteristics of patients was evaluated. Results Based on RT-PCR of 13 AQPs examined, AQP1, 3, 4, 5 and 11 were expressed in human gastric cancers or normal gastric tissues, and AQP3, 4 and 5 exhibited differential expression between human gastric carcinomas and corresponding normal tissues, which was confirmed by Western blot analyses. Immunohistochemical assay showed that AQP4 protein was expressed mainly in the membrane of parietal cell and chief cell in the normal gastric mucosa, and absent in carcinoma tissues. AQP3 and AQP5 were detected remarkably stronger in the carcinoma tissues than that in normal mucosa by immunofluorescence. AQP3 expression in cases with undifferentiated tumor was more than that in cases with well-differentiated tumor. Both AQP3 and AQP5 expression were associated with lymph node metastasis and lymphovascular invasion in patients. Conclusions These findings of differential expressions of AQPs and their correlation with clinicopathologic characteristics implicated AQPs might play a role in human gastric carcinogenesis.

The aim of this study was (a) to determine the role of micro-223 (miR-223) in gastric cancer and (b) to elucidate its regulatory mechanism on the FBXW7/hCdc4 gene. Artificial miR-223 and control oligonucleotide was transfected into gastric cancer cell line SGC7901 by using Lipofectamine2000. Apoptosis of miR-223 group and control group cells was analyzed by flow cytometry, and 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyl-tetrazolium bromide and colony formation assays were performed to detect the cell viability, to survey migration of miR-223 group and control group cells; scratch wound-healing motility assays, Transwell Assay, and Western blot test were performed to measure the variance of hFBXW7. Luciferase Reporter Assay, which was done by pLUC-hFBXW7 WT-3′-UTR co-transfected with pLMP-hsa-miR-223 or pLMP plasmid (as control) into HEK293T cells, used to detect whether hFBXW7 is a direct target gene of miR-223. Gastric cancer cell line SGC7901 transfected with miR-223 or control oligonucleotide was resuspended in ECM gel and then was injected into the flank of nude mice, 4 weeks later, the nude mice were euthanized. The tumors were excised then were measured and weighted. SYBR-Green I-based real-time RT-PCR study was used to detect the level of miR-223 in 22 gastric cancer tissue and corresponding gastric mucosa tissues. Immunohistochemical method was applied to detect the protein of hFBXW7. Gastric cancer cell line SGC7901, transfected with miR-223, showed significant reduction in cellular apoptosis and increased proliferation and invasion in vitro. Similar results were found in tumorigenesis assays performed in nude mice. Moreover, 19 of 22 cancer tissue samples highly expressed miR-223, when compared with patient-matched normal gastric mucosa. Specifically, patients with lymph node metastasis or metastatic disease (M1) at an advanced pathological stage showed significantly higher expression of miR-223. FBXW7/hCdc4 protein (FBW7) levels in gastric cancer cases were inversely correlated with miR-223 expression. Overexpression of miR-223 in gastric cancer cell lines decreased FBW7 expression at the translational level and decreased FBXW7/hCdc4-driven luciferase-reporter activity. In summary, the data indicated that miR-223 targets FBXW7/hCdc4 expression at the post-transcriptional level and appears to regulate cellular apoptosis, proliferation, and invasion in gastric cancer. MiR-223 may serve as a novel therapeutic target in gastric cancer.

Resveratrol, a phytoalexin found in a range of plant products, may exert a variety of pharmacological activities. In this study, we investigated the effect of resveratrol on acute lung injury (ALI) induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in vivo, and we found that the pretreatment with resveratrol can effectively protect mice against LPS-induced ALI. Mice were pretreated with 1 mg/kg resveratrol for 3 days before challenging with a dose of 15 mg/kg LPS. The histological result showed that resveratrol can suppress the edema, inflammatory cell infiltration, and alveolar structure damage of lungs in ALI mice, and a decrease in the lung W/D ratio was also observed in mice with resveratrol pretreatment. Additionally, resveratrol markedly decreased the production of inflammatory cytokines, including IL-1β and MIP-1α and prevented the release of nitric oxide (NO) through inhibiting the expression of inducible NO synthase in lung tissues. Furthermore, the pretreatment with resveratrol suppressed the nuclear translocation of NF-κB in lung tissues, which may be partly responsible for its effect on the ALI. In conclusion, the results presented here may suggest resveratrol as a potential therapeutic agent for treating ALI in the future.

Background Dendritic cells (DCs) secrete exosomes bearing major histocompatibility complex I and II (MHC I /II) and co-stimulatory molecules, and play a critical role in immune regulation. Because immature DCs can induce T-cell tolerance in vitro and in vivo , we explored the possibility of using exosomes derived from immature DCs (imDex) for the induction of intestinal transplant tolerance in rats. Materials and Methods ImDex were purified from F344 rat bone marrow immature DCs. The tolerizing capacities of imDex were analyzed in vitro and in vivo using a F344-to-Wistar intestinal transplantation model. Results In the context of a moderate level of MHC class II and a low co-stimulatory level expression, imDex significantly suppressed the alloreactive T-cell response with an increase in IL-10 in vitro . In vivo injection of the lower dose (20 μg) of donor (but not recipient) imDex can significantly prolong the survival of intestinal allografts. This effect was accompanied by a decrease in the anti-donor cellular response, with a significant increase in IL-10. The CD4+CD25+T cells percentage and FOXP3mRNA expression in splenic T-cells were also significantly increased in imDex treatment recipients at five days after transplantation. Conclusions The results suggest that imDex can prolong the intestinal allograft survival and may be a potential strategy to facilitate induction of transplant tolerance.

Cyclo-oxygenase metabolites are important regulators of pulmonary vascular and airway tone and may act to regulate ventilation-perfusion (VA/Q) relationships. Hypoxemia that follows aspiration of gastric acid is associated with increased venous admixture, and plasma levels of thromboxane (TX) B2 and 6-keto-PGF2 alpha are increased after experimental acid-induced acute lung injury. The present study was designed to determine the effects of cyclo-oxygenase metabolites on VA/Q relationships in canine acid aspiration. Eighteen anesthetized dogs received 0.2 mL/kg 0.1 N HCl intratracheally; six were pretreated with ibuprofen (IBU), a cyclo-oxygenase inhibitor, 12.5 mg/kg IV, and six other dogs received OKY-046 (OKY), a TX synthetase inhibitor, 0.5 mg/kg IV. The remaining six animals (ACID) served as controls. Continuous distributions of ventilation and perfusion were evaluated with the multiple inert gas elimination technique. Within 30 minutes, acid injury resulted in significant (p < 0.05) decreases in PaO2 from baseline values by 44.7 +/- 5.4 and 47.6 +/- 4.8 mm Hg in the ACID and OKY groups, respectively. Although decreased, the change in PaO2 of 21.0 +/- 4.8 mm Hg in IBU animals was significantly (p < 0.05) attenuated in comparison with the other groups. Ibuprofen increased pulmonary vascular resistance, attenuated perfusion to shunt and low VA/Q areas, and reduced ventilation to unperfused areas for the first 2 hours after acid injury (all p < 0.05), whereas OKY exacerbated hypoxemia and VA/Q inequality.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Aberrant activation of Wnt/beta-catenin signaling is involved in various cancers, including human gastric cancer. Here we investigate the role of Wnt/beta-catenin signaling in regulating gastric cancer cell apoptosis.Expression of beta-catenin was investigated after transfection with beta-catenin short hairpin RNA (shRNA) in gastric cancer cells by Western blotting and immunofluorescence analysis. beta-catenin/T-cell factor transcriptional activity was also investigated by using a luciferase reporter assay. Next, the effects of beta-catenin shRNA on cell proliferation and apoptosis were evaluated by the 3-(4,5-Dimethylthiazol-2-Yl)-2,5-Diphenyltetrazolium Bromide assay and flow cytometric analysis. To investigate the precise mechanism of these effects, a comprehensive analysis was performed using a cDNA microarray.shRNA targeting beta-catenin resulted in a significant decrease in beta-catenin expression, and its nuclear localization and cell proliferation. Meanwhile, increased cell apoptosis was confirmed. The comprehensive analysis showed that shRNA targeting beta-catenin upregulated 26 apoptosis-related genes (including PERP, TRAF3, PDCD2, TNFRSF25, AKT2 and YWHAZ) and downregulated 48 apoptosis-related genes (including MALT1, IRAK1, TNFAIP3, PPP1R13L, TRIP and YWHAB) in gastric cancer cells. Pathway analysis suggested that the nuclear factor-kappaB pathway was involved in beta-catenin knockdown-induced apoptosis.Attenuation of beta-catenin by shRNA resulted in suppressed cell proliferation and apparent apoptosis, suggesting that beta-catenin may be a target for therapy of gastric cancer.

Summary Background and objective Aquaporine-4 (AQP4) is a member of the water channel protein family, which is thought to be associated with tumor development. A recent work suggests that AQP play key roles in tumor biology. Methods In this study, we measured the expression and localization of AQP4 in 60 gastric epithelial tumor cases and 10 normal tissue cases by immunohistochemistry, Western blotting and RT-PCR analysis. Results AQP4 protein and mRNA expression level in gastric cancer tissue were significantly lower than those in normal gastric tissue. No significant variations were found according to TNM stage, histological type, grade and distant metastasis. Conclusion Our results suggest that the expression of AQP4 is a marker of normal proliferating gastric epithelial cells. More cases and further research may be necessary to elucidate their exact role in normal or pathologic proliferation and/or differentiation.