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Although eating disorders are common, they tend to be underdiagnosed and undertreated because social stigma tends to make patients less likely to seek medical attention and less compliant with medical treatment. Diagnosis is crucial because these disorders can affect any organ system and are associated with the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. Because of this, imaging findings, when recognized, can be vital to the diagnosis and management of eating disorders and their related complications. The authors familiarize the radiologist with the pathophysiology and sequelae of eating disorders and provide an overview of the related imaging findings. Some imaging findings associated with eating disorders are nonspecific, and others are subtle. The presence of these findings should alert the radiologist to correlate them with the patient's medical history and laboratory results and the clinical team's findings at the physical examination. The combination of these findings may suggest a diagnosis that might otherwise be missed. Topics addressed include

Peripheral arterial and venous examinations are performed regularly in vascular labs and interpreted by physicians of different specialities. Many vascular examinations have nonvascular pathology that is either inadvertently imaged by the sonographer or imaged with intent as it relates to patient's symptoms. It is prudent for every reader of vascular studies to be acquainted with the sonographic appearance of these non-vascular lesions to enable appropriate and optimal interpretation that has a direct bearing on patient's clinical care. Our review includes a discussion of the nonvascular pathologies like lymph nodes, soft tissue edema, soft tissue fluid collections, musculotendinous injuries, soft tissue masses, and joint and bursal pathologies that may be encountered during interpretation of vascular exams. The pictorial essay includes a discussion of their sonographic appearances and pitfalls in interpretation. Multiple illustrative examples and sonographic images of the non-vascular pathologies found during interpretation of vascular studies have been utilized to highlight their appearances.

Effects of maca polysaccharides on intestinal immunity and intestinal inflammation.

Quantum control is an important basis for quantum computing, quantum com-munication and quantum simulation. The key of quantum control is to realize quantum logicoperators with high fidelity. In this paper, based on spin-1/2 system, the optimal simulationof three Pauli logic operators is carried out by using quantum optimal control theory. Under Pauli z spin-presentation, the results show that under the given quantum initial state, the Pauli operators achieve the expected target quantum state with a high fidelity of 0.9999. When the control pulse is applied on x-axis, the number of iterations required to optimize Pauli x operator to achieve the target state is the least, and the number of iterations requiredto optimize Pauli z operator is the most. In addition, the comparison shows that when thefidelity reach 0.9999, the population of the quantum final state can reach the ideal theoreti-cal expectation. Besides, the optimization fidelity of Hadamard gate can also reaches 0.9999 based on spin-1/2 system. Finally, the study on the phase evolution of quantum states showsthat the phase difference between the initial and final quantum states of optimized Pauli xand Pauli z logic operator is π/2, and there is no phase difference between the final quantumstate and the initial quantum state after the evolution of optimized Pauli y operator.

Quantum teleportation provides a way to transmit information from one location to another via a quantum channel. In traditional teleportation schemes, if the quantum channel is a non-maximally entangled quantum state, the success probability of teleporting an unknown three-dimensional quantum state can not be reached 100%. Here we propose a deterministic teleportation scheme to overcome this challenge, and our results show that the success probability of teleporting a three-dimensional quantum state can be increased to 100%. In particular, we have analyzed the security of our teleportation process, including particle transmission, and proved this process safe. Our scheme has high experimental feasibility.

Tyrosinase is a key enzyme responsible for enzymatic browning of fruits and vegetables and skin disorders due to overproduction of melanin. Arbutin is an inhibitor of tyrosinase; however, its high polarity and weak transdermal absorption capacity limit its applications. In this paper, a green solvent system was developed to successfully synthesize arbutin esters with improved liposolubilities (Clog P values = 0.27-5.03). Among the obtained esters, arbutin undecenoate (AU) showed the strongest tyrosinase-inhibiting activity (15.6%), which was 9.0 times higher than that of arbutin. An enzyme kinetics study indicated that AU was a competitive inhibitor with reversible inhibition. The esters inhibited tyrosinase by making the secondary structure of tyrosinase looser and less stable; moreover, the interactions between tyrosinase and AU driven by metal interactions and hydrogen bonds also offered a mechanism for inhibition of AU on tyrosinase. In addition, AU (100 μM) reduced the melanin content of B16 mouse melanoma cells to 61.3% of the control group.

Drug resistance is a major obstacle to the treatment of most human tumors. In this study, we find that dual-specificity phosphatase 16 (DUSP16) regulates resistance to chemotherapy in nasopharyngeal carcinoma, colorectal cancer, gastric and breast cancer. Cancer cells expressing higher DUSP16 are intrinsically more resistant to chemotherapy-induced cell death than cells with lower DUSP16 expression. Overexpression of DUSP16 in cancer cells leads to increased resistance to cell death upon chemotherapy treatment. In contrast, knockdown of DUSP16 in cancer cells increases their sensitivity to treatment. Mechanistically, DUSP16 inhibits JNK and p38 activation, thereby reducing BAX accumulation in mitochondria to reduce apoptosis. Analysis of patient survival in head & neck cancer and breast cancer patient cohorts supports DUSP16 as a marker for sensitivity to chemotherapy and therapeutic outcome. This study therefore identifies DUSP16 as a prognostic marker for the efficacy of chemotherapy, and as a therapeutic target for overcoming chemoresistance in cancer., Chemoresistance is one of the main challenges for cancer therapy success. Here, the authors show that dual-specificity phosphatase 16 (DUSP16) expression is associated with chemoresistance in several types of cancer through impairing mitochondria-associated apoptosis.

Normally, there are multiple microRNAs involved in the pathogenesis of liver fibrosis. In our work, we aimed at identifying the role of miR-34c in the hepatic stellate cell (HSC) activation and liver fibrosis and its potential mechanism. Our results have shown that during natural activation of HSC, the level of miR-34c was increased significantly whereas acyl-CoA synthetase long-chain family member-1(ACSL1), which is a key enzyme can affect fatty acid(FA) synthesis, was decreased. A double fluorescence reporter assay further confirmed that ACSL1 is a direct target gene of miR-34c. Moreover, the inhibition of miR-34C can attenuate the synthesis of collagen in HSC-T6. In our rescue assay, ACSL1 expression was 1.49-fold higher compared to normal control cells which were transfected with the miR-34c inhibitor in a stable low expression ACSL1 cell line. While at the same time, α-SMA and Col1α expression decreased by 18.22% and 2.58%, respectively. Moreover, we performed an in vivo model using dimethylnitrosamine (DMN) in conjunction with the miR-34c agomir, combined with the treatment of DMN and the miR-34c agomir can increase liver fibrosis. Meanwhile, the degree of hepatic fibrosis was increased and lipid droplets reduced dramatically in rats and HSC-T6 cell treated with miR-34c mimics alone compared to untreated groups. Our results indicate that miR-34c plays an essential role in liver fibrosis by targeting ACSL1 closely associated with lipid droplets, and it might be used as a potential therapeutic target.

Duck egg white (DEW) is considered as an abandoned protein resource. For a higher-value utilization, preparation of immunomodulatory peptides from the extracted ovalbumin in DEW was explored. Among the hydrolysates catalyzed by five proteases, papain hydrolysate (PH) shows the highest degree of hydrolysis and the strongest immunomodulatory activity. PH could significantly enhance the phagocytic capacity and promote the NO, TNF-α, and IL-6 secretion of RAW 264.7 cells, involving toll-like receptor 2 and 4. After purification, nine identified peptides were synthesized to confirm the immunomodulatory effect, and five of them exhibit a strong activity. The peptide, TQIDKVVHFDKLPGF, presents the highest immunomodulatory activity. Moreover, the results of molecular docking indicate that nine peptides interacted with toll-like receptor 2 and 4 and all show good affinity. Furthermore, three peptides with high affinity and strong immune activity were selected for interaction site map analysis. Three peptides could form hydrogen bonds with the receptor and bind stably, which contributes to the immunomodulatory activity of the peptide. Results suggest that DEW can be a promising source of immunomodulatory peptides.

Phenolic glycosides are the major secondary metabolites of plants, which exhibit multiple attractive biological and pharmacological activities. In this study, we developed a new and efficient metho...

In this paper, we present a detailed derivation and numerical investigation of an indicator function for front-tracking methods. We use the discrete Dirac delta function to construct an indicator function from a set of Lagrangian points and solve the resulting discrete Poisson equation with the zero Dirichlet boundary condition using an iterative method. We present several computational tests to investigate the effect of parameters such as distance between points, uniformity of the distance, and types of the Dirac delta functions on the indicator function.

In this paper, an enzymatic route for synthesizing phenolic glycoside azelaic acid esters was successfully set up via lipase-catalyzed esterification and transesterification. Among the lipases tested, Candida antarctica lipase B (Novozyme 435) showed the highest activity in catalyzing esterification and Thermomyces lanuginosus (Lipozyme TLIM) gave the highest substrate conversion in catalyzing transesterification for the synthesis of ester. The addition of 4A molecular sieves into the reaction system is found to be an effective method for in situ absorption of the byproduct water and methanol, with which the substrate conversions of the enzymatic esterification and transesterification were 98.7 and 95.1%, respectively. Also, the main product ratios in transesterification were above 99.0% with lipozyme TLIM as a catalyst because the hydrolysis reaction was hindered. The results of the physical and biological properties indicate that all esters had higher Clog p values than their parent compounds. Also, the esters showed higher intracellular tyrosinase inhibitory and depigmentating activities than phenolic glycosides, azelaic acid (AA), and their physical mixtures due to their higher membrane penetration and tyrosinase inhibitory effects. In particular, piceid 6″-O-azelaic acid ester (PIA) showed the strongest inhibitory effect against melanin production. Its inhibitory rate was 77.4% at a concentration of 0.25 mM, about 4.2 times higher than that of arbutin (18.5%).

An efficient whole-cell biocatalytic method was developed for the cascade hydrolysis of flavonoid glycosides to their valuable hydrolyzates with high substrate conversions. Cells of Aspergillus niger showed both α-L-rhamnosidase and β-D-glucosidase activities, catalyzing the hydrolysis of hesperidin (HES) through two pathways in one pot: (1) α-L-rhamnosidase catalyzed HES hydrolysis to hesperetin-7-O-glucoside (HG) and subsequently β-D-glucosidase catalyzed HG hydrolysis to hesperetin, and (2) β-D-glucosidase catalyzed direct hydrolysis of HES to hesperetin. Both the HES conversion and product composition were controllable by adjusting the key reaction conditions and addition of different sugars. Remarkably, high conversions (above 90%) of HES were achieved by using green solvents in place of traditional organic solvents for dissolving polar substrates. The type and concentration of natural deep eutectic solvents (NADESs) in buffer solutions evidently influenced both the catalytic activity and selectivity of the cells. Inverted fluorescence microscopy and OD260/OD280 analysis suggested that NADESs can enhance the cellular membrane permeability, but high concentration of NADESs may damage cellular membranes and reduce the activity of enzymes. Furthermore, the whole-cell catalysts showed good scaled-up capability and stability. The whole cells also showed a relatively broad substrate spectrum towards various citrus flavonoid glycosides and their derivatives, with substrate conversions of 58.1%–98.2% and monoglycoside percentages of 73.3%–98.9%. This demonstration of whole-cell catalysis for one-pot cascade hydrolysis of flavonoid glycosides offers an eco-friendly, scalable and flexible platform method for the production of useful and valuable flavonoid monoglycosides and aglycones from inexpensive substances.

Enzymatic acylation is commonly used to increase the lipophilicity of flavonoids. However, the absence of primary hydroxyl groups makes it challenging to acylate baicalin using traditional acylation methods. In this study, an enzymatic esterification strategy was developed to introduce fatty-acid chains into baicalin at its carboxyl group, hence successfully synthesizing a new series of baicalin ester derivatives in nonaqueous media. Under the optimal reaction conditions, up to 95% conversion of baicalin was achieved. Antimicrobial evaluation of the baicalin ester derivatives indicated a corresponding increase to that of