AIM: TO investigate the protective effects and possible mechanisms of Veratrum nigrum L. var. ussuriense Nakai alkaloids (VnA) on hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury in rats. METHODS: Forty male Wistar rat...AIM: TO investigate the protective effects and possible mechanisms of Veratrum nigrum L. var. ussuriense Nakai alkaloids (VnA) on hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury in rats. METHODS: Forty male Wistar rats were randomly divided into four experimental groups (n = 10 in each): (A) Control group (the sham operation group); (8) I/R group (pretreated with normal saline); (C) Small-dose (10 μg/kg) VnA pretreatment group; (D) Large-dose (20 μg/kg) VnA pretreatment group. Hepatic ischemia/ reperfusion (Hepatic I/R) was induced by occlusion of the portal vein and the hepatic artery for 90 min, followed by reperfusion for 240 min. The pretreatment groups were administered with VnA intraperitoneally, 30 min before surgery, while the control group and I/R group were given equal volumes of normal saline. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity and nitric oxide (NO) content in the liver tissue at the end of reperfusion were determined and liver function was measured. The expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) and E-selectin (ES) were detected by immunohistochemical examinations and Western blot analyses. RESULTS: The results showed that hepatic I/R elicited a significant increase in the plasma levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT: 74.53 ± 2.58 IU/L vs 1512.54 ± 200.76 IU/L, P 〈 0.01) and lactic dehydrogenase (LDH: 473.48 ± 52.17 IU/L vs 5821.53 ± 163.69 IU/L, P 〈 0.01), as well as the levels of MPO (1.97 ± 0.11 U/g vs 2.57 ± 0.13 U/g, P 〈 0.01) and NO (69.37 ± 1.52 μmol/g protein vs 78.39 ± 2.28 μmol/g protein, P 〈 0.01) in the liver tissue, all of which were reduced by pretreatment with VnA, respectively (ALT: 1512.54 ± 200.76 IU/L vs 977.93 ± 89.62 IU/L, 909.81 ± 132.76 IU/L, P 〈 0.01, P 〈 0.01; LDH: 5821.53 ± 163.69 IU/L vs 3015.44 ± 253.01 IU/L, 2448.75 ± 169.4 IU/L, P 〈 0.01, P 〈 0.01; MPO: 2.57 ± 0.13 U/g vs 2.13 ± 0.13 U/g, 2.07 ± 0.05 U/g, P 〈 0.01, P 〈 0.01; NO: 78.39 ± 2.28 μmol/g protein vs 71.11 ± 1.73 μmol/g protein, 68.58 ± 1.95 μmol/g protein, P 〈 0.05, P 〈 0.01). The activity of SOD (361.75 ± 16.22 U/rag protein vs 263.19 ± 12.10 U/rag protein, P 〈 0.01) in the liver tissue was decreased after I/R, which was enhanced by VnA pretreatment (263.19 ± 12.10 U/rag protein vs 299.40 ± 10.80 U/rag protein, 302.09 + 14.80 U/rag protein, P 〈 0.05, P 〈 0.05). Simultaneously, the histological evidence of liver hemorrhage, polymorphonuclear neutrophil infiltration and the overexpression of ICAM-1 and E-selectin in the liver tissue were observed, all of which were attenuated in the VnA pretreated groups. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrate that VnA pretreatment exerts significant protection against hepatic I/R injury in rats. The protective effects are possibly associated with enhancement of antioxidant capacity, reduction of inflammatory responses and suppressed expression of ICAM-1 and E-selectin.展开更多
A thermodynamic model of calculating mass action concentrations for structural units or ion couples in NaClO4-H2O and NaF-H2O binary solutions and NaClO4-NaF-H2O ternary strong electrolyte aqueous solutions was develo...A thermodynamic model of calculating mass action concentrations for structural units or ion couples in NaClO4-H2O and NaF-H2O binary solutions and NaClO4-NaF-H2O ternary strong electrolyte aqueous solutions was developed based on the ion and molecule coexistence theory (IMCT). A transformation coefficient was needed to compare the calculated mass action concentration and the reported activity, because they were usually obtained at different standard states and concentration units. The results show that transformation coefficients between the calculated mass action concentrations and the reported activities of the same components change in a very narrow range. The transformed mass action concentrations of structural units or ion couples in NaClO4-H2O and NaF-H2O binary solutions agree well with the reported activities. The transformed mass action concentrations of structural units or ion couples in NaClO4-NaF-H2O ternary solution are also in good agreement with the reported activities in a total ionic strength range from 0.1 to 0.9 mol/kg H2O by the 0.1 mol/kg step with different ionic strength fractions of 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8, and 1, respectively. The results indicate that the developed thermodynamic model can reveal the structural characteristics of binary and ternary strong electrolyte aqueous solutions, and the calculated mass action concentrations of structural units or ion couples also strictly follow the mass action law.展开更多
Image matting is to estimate the opacity of foreground objects from an image. A few deep learning based methods have been proposed for image matting and perform well in capturing spatially close information. However, ...Image matting is to estimate the opacity of foreground objects from an image. A few deep learning based methods have been proposed for image matting and perform well in capturing spatially close information. However, these methods fail to capture global contextual information, which has been proved essential in improving matting performance. This is because a matting image may be up to several megapixels, which is too big for a learning-based network to capture global contextual information due to the limit size of a receptive field. Although uniformly downsampling the matting image can alleviate this problem, it may result in the degradation of matting performance. To solve this problem, we introduce a natural image matting with the attended global context method to extract global contextual information from the whole image, and to condense them into a suitable size for learning-based network. Specifically, we first leverage a deformable sampling layer to obtain condensed foreground and background attended images respectively. Then, we utilize a contextual attention layer to extract information related to unknown regions from condensed foreground and background images generated by a deformable sampling layer. Besides, our network predicts a background as well as the alpha matte to obtain more purified foreground, which contributes to better qualitative performance in composition. Comprehensive experiments show that our method achieves competitive performance on both Composition-1k and the alphamatting.com benchmark quantitatively and qualitatively.展开更多
2β,3α--Dihydroxyurs-12-en-28-oic acid (6) is a naturally occurring diastereoisomer of corosolic acid with glycogen phosphorylase inhibitory activity. A new strategy for the semi-synthesis of 6 was developed. Using...2β,3α--Dihydroxyurs-12-en-28-oic acid (6) is a naturally occurring diastereoisomer of corosolic acid with glycogen phosphorylase inhibitory activity. A new strategy for the semi-synthesis of 6 was developed. Using the commercially available ursolic acid (1) as the starting materials, 6 was synthesized through five facile reactions with a high stereoselectivity and an overall yield of 47,3%, The structure of 6 was confirmed by optical rotation, ESI-MS, 1H NMR and 13C NMR data,展开更多
文摘AIM: TO investigate the protective effects and possible mechanisms of Veratrum nigrum L. var. ussuriense Nakai alkaloids (VnA) on hepatic ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury in rats. METHODS: Forty male Wistar rats were randomly divided into four experimental groups (n = 10 in each): (A) Control group (the sham operation group); (8) I/R group (pretreated with normal saline); (C) Small-dose (10 μg/kg) VnA pretreatment group; (D) Large-dose (20 μg/kg) VnA pretreatment group. Hepatic ischemia/ reperfusion (Hepatic I/R) was induced by occlusion of the portal vein and the hepatic artery for 90 min, followed by reperfusion for 240 min. The pretreatment groups were administered with VnA intraperitoneally, 30 min before surgery, while the control group and I/R group were given equal volumes of normal saline. Superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity and nitric oxide (NO) content in the liver tissue at the end of reperfusion were determined and liver function was measured. The expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1) and E-selectin (ES) were detected by immunohistochemical examinations and Western blot analyses. RESULTS: The results showed that hepatic I/R elicited a significant increase in the plasma levels of alanine aminotransferase (ALT: 74.53 ± 2.58 IU/L vs 1512.54 ± 200.76 IU/L, P 〈 0.01) and lactic dehydrogenase (LDH: 473.48 ± 52.17 IU/L vs 5821.53 ± 163.69 IU/L, P 〈 0.01), as well as the levels of MPO (1.97 ± 0.11 U/g vs 2.57 ± 0.13 U/g, P 〈 0.01) and NO (69.37 ± 1.52 μmol/g protein vs 78.39 ± 2.28 μmol/g protein, P 〈 0.01) in the liver tissue, all of which were reduced by pretreatment with VnA, respectively (ALT: 1512.54 ± 200.76 IU/L vs 977.93 ± 89.62 IU/L, 909.81 ± 132.76 IU/L, P 〈 0.01, P 〈 0.01; LDH: 5821.53 ± 163.69 IU/L vs 3015.44 ± 253.01 IU/L, 2448.75 ± 169.4 IU/L, P 〈 0.01, P 〈 0.01; MPO: 2.57 ± 0.13 U/g vs 2.13 ± 0.13 U/g, 2.07 ± 0.05 U/g, P 〈 0.01, P 〈 0.01; NO: 78.39 ± 2.28 μmol/g protein vs 71.11 ± 1.73 μmol/g protein, 68.58 ± 1.95 μmol/g protein, P 〈 0.05, P 〈 0.01). The activity of SOD (361.75 ± 16.22 U/rag protein vs 263.19 ± 12.10 U/rag protein, P 〈 0.01) in the liver tissue was decreased after I/R, which was enhanced by VnA pretreatment (263.19 ± 12.10 U/rag protein vs 299.40 ± 10.80 U/rag protein, 302.09 + 14.80 U/rag protein, P 〈 0.05, P 〈 0.05). Simultaneously, the histological evidence of liver hemorrhage, polymorphonuclear neutrophil infiltration and the overexpression of ICAM-1 and E-selectin in the liver tissue were observed, all of which were attenuated in the VnA pretreated groups. CONCLUSION: The results demonstrate that VnA pretreatment exerts significant protection against hepatic I/R injury in rats. The protective effects are possibly associated with enhancement of antioxidant capacity, reduction of inflammatory responses and suppressed expression of ICAM-1 and E-selectin.
基金supported by the Publication Foundation of China National Science and Technology Academic Books
文摘A thermodynamic model of calculating mass action concentrations for structural units or ion couples in NaClO4-H2O and NaF-H2O binary solutions and NaClO4-NaF-H2O ternary strong electrolyte aqueous solutions was developed based on the ion and molecule coexistence theory (IMCT). A transformation coefficient was needed to compare the calculated mass action concentration and the reported activity, because they were usually obtained at different standard states and concentration units. The results show that transformation coefficients between the calculated mass action concentrations and the reported activities of the same components change in a very narrow range. The transformed mass action concentrations of structural units or ion couples in NaClO4-H2O and NaF-H2O binary solutions agree well with the reported activities. The transformed mass action concentrations of structural units or ion couples in NaClO4-NaF-H2O ternary solution are also in good agreement with the reported activities in a total ionic strength range from 0.1 to 0.9 mol/kg H2O by the 0.1 mol/kg step with different ionic strength fractions of 0, 0.2, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.8, and 1, respectively. The results indicate that the developed thermodynamic model can reveal the structural characteristics of binary and ternary strong electrolyte aqueous solutions, and the calculated mass action concentrations of structural units or ion couples also strictly follow the mass action law.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No.62076162the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project under Grant Nos.2021SHZDZX0102 and 20511100300.
文摘Image matting is to estimate the opacity of foreground objects from an image. A few deep learning based methods have been proposed for image matting and perform well in capturing spatially close information. However, these methods fail to capture global contextual information, which has been proved essential in improving matting performance. This is because a matting image may be up to several megapixels, which is too big for a learning-based network to capture global contextual information due to the limit size of a receptive field. Although uniformly downsampling the matting image can alleviate this problem, it may result in the degradation of matting performance. To solve this problem, we introduce a natural image matting with the attended global context method to extract global contextual information from the whole image, and to condense them into a suitable size for learning-based network. Specifically, we first leverage a deformable sampling layer to obtain condensed foreground and background attended images respectively. Then, we utilize a contextual attention layer to extract information related to unknown regions from condensed foreground and background images generated by a deformable sampling layer. Besides, our network predicts a background as well as the alpha matte to obtain more purified foreground, which contributes to better qualitative performance in composition. Comprehensive experiments show that our method achieves competitive performance on both Composition-1k and the alphamatting.com benchmark quantitatively and qualitatively.
基金Financial support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities(No.DUT12JB08)
文摘2β,3α--Dihydroxyurs-12-en-28-oic acid (6) is a naturally occurring diastereoisomer of corosolic acid with glycogen phosphorylase inhibitory activity. A new strategy for the semi-synthesis of 6 was developed. Using the commercially available ursolic acid (1) as the starting materials, 6 was synthesized through five facile reactions with a high stereoselectivity and an overall yield of 47,3%, The structure of 6 was confirmed by optical rotation, ESI-MS, 1H NMR and 13C NMR data,