Within-Session Reliability of fNIRS in Robot-Assisted Upper-Limb Training.

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) seems opportune for neurofeedback in robot-assisted rehabilitation training due to its noninvasive, less physical restriction, and no electromagnetic disturbance. Previous research has proved the cross-session reliability of fNIRS responses to non-motor tasks (e.g., visual stimuli) and fine-motor tasks (e.g., finger tapping). However, it is still unknown whether fNIRS responses remain reliable 1) in gross-motor tasks, 2) within a training session, and 3) for different training parameters. Hence, this study aimed to investigate the within-session reliability of fNIRS responses to gross-motor tasks for different training parameters. Ten healthy participants were recruited to conduct right elbow extension-flexion in three robot-assisted modes. The Passive mode was fully motor-actuated, while Active1 and Active2 modes involved active engagement with different resistance levels. FNIRS data of three identical runs were used to assess the within-session reliability in terms of the map- ( R2 ) and cluster-wise ( Roverlap ) spatial reproducibility and the intraclass correlation (ICC) of temporal features. The results revealed good spatial reliability ( R2 up to 0.69, Roverlap up to 0.68) at the subject level. Besides, the within-session temporal reliabilities of Slope, Max/Min, and Mean were between good and excellent ( ICC < 0.86). We also found that the within-session reliability was positively correlated with the intensity of the training mode, except for the temporal reliability of HbO in Active2 mode. Overall, our results demonstrated good within-session reliability of fNIRS responses, suggesting fNIRS as reliable neurofeedback for constructing closed-loop robot-assisted rehabilitation systems.

Targeting gut microbial nitrogen recycling and cellular uptake of ammonium to improve bortezomib resistance in multiple myeloma.

The gut microbiome has been found to play a crucial role in the treatment of multiple myeloma (MM), which is still considered incurable due to drug resistance. In previous studies, we demonstrated that intestinal nitrogen-recycling bacteria are enriched in patients with MM. However, their role in MM relapse remains unclear. This study highlights the specific enrichment of Citrobacter freundii (C. freundii) in patients with relapsed MM. Through fecal microbial transplantation experiments, we demonstrate that C. freundii plays a critical role in inducing drug resistance in MM by increasing levels of circulating ammonium. The ammonium enters MM cells through the transmembrane channel protein SLC12A2, promoting chromosomal instability and drug resistance by stabilizing the NEK2 protein. We show that furosemide sodium, a loop diuretic, downregulates SLC12A2, thereby inhibiting ammonium uptake by MM cells and improving progression-free survival and curative effect scores. These findings provide new therapeutic targets and strategies for the intervention of MM progression and drug resistance.

A new dataset of oral panoramic x-ray images and parallel network using transformers for medical image segmentation.

INTRODUCTION: Accurate segmentation of the key mandibular region in the oral panoramic X-ray image is crucial for the diagnosis of the mandibular region and the planning of implant surgery. Because the oral panoramic X-ray image contains many important anatomical information for implant treatment evaluation. However, the fuzzy boundary between each region in the image makes the segmentation task very challenging. In data-driven segmentation methods, corresponding datasets are often required. Due to the limited oral data set at present, there is a bottleneck in clinical application. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this paper, we build a panoramic X-ray image dataset for the mandibular region. The dataset has a total of 711 images. The dataset is divided into 8 categories based on the number of teeth and treatment conditions. The annotations include mandible, normal teeth, treated teeth and implants. In terms of network segmentation. According to the local and global characteristics of the dataset, we designed a CBTrans partition network by paralleling the convolution block and the Swin-transform block of the bottleneck structure. RESULTS: The experimental results show that our proposed network achieves excellent performance on the mandibular region segmentation dataset and the common retina dataset DRIVE. CONCLUSION: CBTrans can better extract features locally and globally by combining CNN of the bottleneck structure and Swin Transformer in parallel. CBTrans demonstrates performance advantages over other similar hybrid architecture models.

A New Compound-Limbs Paradigm: Integrating Upper-Limb Swing Improves Lower-Limb Stepping Intention Decoding From EEG.

Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems based on spontaneous electroencephalography (EEG) hold the promise to implement human voluntary control of lower-extremity powered exoskeletons. However, current EEG-BCI paradigms do not consider the cooperation of upper and lower limbs during walking, which is inconsistent with natural human stepping patterns. To deal with this problem, this study proposed a stepping-matched human EEG-BCI paradigm that involved actions of both unilateral lower and contralateral upper limbs (also referred to as compound-limbs movement). Experiments were conducted in motor execution (ME) and motor imagery (MI) conditions to validate the feasibility. Common spatial pattern (CSP) proposed subject-specific CSP (SSCSP), and filter-bank CSP (FBCSP) methods were applied for feature extraction, respectively. The best average classification results based on SSCSP indicated that the accuracies of compound-limbs paradigms in ME and MI conditions achieved 89.02% ± 12.84% and 73.70% ± 12.47%, respectively. Although they were 2.03% and 5.68% lower than those of the single-upper-limb mode that does not match human stepping patterns, they were 24.30% and 11.02% higher than those of the single-lower-limb mode. These findings indicated that the proposed compound-limbs EEG-BCI paradigm is feasible for decoding human stepping intention and thus provides a potential way for natural human control of walking assistance devices.

Lobaplatin induces apoptosis in T24 and 5637 bladder cancer cells by regulating Bcl-2 and Bax expression and inhibiting the PI3K/Akt signaling pathway.

Background: Lobaplatin (LBP) is a third-generation platinum-based drug that has been approved only in China for the treatment of several cancer types. Nonetheless, its efficacy in treating bladder cancer (BC) is unclear thus far. Through in vitro and in vivo experiments, this study aimed to explore whether LBP has an antitumor effect on T24 and 5637 BC cells and whether the effect is related to B-cell lymphoma-2 (Bcl-2), Bcl-2-associated X protein (Bax) and regulation of the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (Akt) pathway. Methods: For in vitro experiments, the cell counting kit-8 (CCK-8) method was used to determine how different concentrations of LBP affect the viability of two types of BC cells. A wound healing assay was used to test the inhibitory effect of LBP on the migration of the two cell lines. Annexin V-fluorescein isothiocyanate isomer I (V-FITC)/propidium iodide (PI) staining was used to detect changes in cell apoptosis before and after LBP treatment, and Western blotting was used to detect the expression of apoptosis-related proteins and PI3K/Akt pathway proteins. For in vivo experiments, a cell-derived xenograft (CDX) model was employed, and the weight of nude mice and the tumor size were measured. Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the effect of LBP on the expression of apoptosis-related proteins in tumor xenografts. Results: In vitro, LBP reduced proliferation (P<0.05), inhibited migration (P<0.05), and induced apoptosis in T24 (31.25%±1.20%, P<0.01) and 5637 (14.3%±2.24%, P<0.05) BC cells, in a dose-dependent manner (P<0.05); increased the expression of proapoptotic proteins, including Bax, caspase-3 and cleaved caspase-3 (P<0.05); and suppressed the expression of antiapoptotic proteins, including Bcl-2, PI3K, Akt and phosphorylated Akt (p-Akt). The in vivo experiment confirmed that LBP can reduce the size of subcutaneous tumors in nude mice (P<0.05), increase the expression levels of Bax and cleaved caspase-3 and lower the expression of Bcl-2 (P<0.05) in bladder tumor tissue. Conclusions: The results obtained from both experiments suggest that LBP can inhibit the proliferation of T24 and 5637 BC cells, which might be credited to its effects in regulating Bcl-2 and Bax expression and inhibiting the PI3K/Akt pathway.

Will nanomedicine become a good solution for the cardiotoxicity of chemotherapy drugs?

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, and with the continuous development of life sciences and pharmaceutical technology, more and more antitumor drugs are being used in clinics to benefit cancer patients. However, the incidence of chemotherapy-induced cardiotoxicity has been continuously increasing, threatening patients' long-term survival. Cardio-oncology has become a research hot spot, and the combination of nanotechnology and biomedicine has brought about an unprecedented technological revolution. Nanomaterials have the potential to maximize the efficacy and reduce the side effects of chemotherapeutic drugs when used as their carriers, and several nano-formulations of frequently used chemotherapeutic drugs have already been approved for marketing. In this review, we summarize chemotherapeutic drugs that are highly associated with cardiotoxicity and evaluate the role of nano-delivery systems in reducing cardiotoxicity based on studies of their marketed or R&D nano-formulations. Some of the marketed chemotherapy drugs are combined with nano-delivery systems that can effectively deliver chemotherapy drugs to tumors and cannot easily penetrate the endothelial barrier of the heart, thus decreasing their distribution in the heart and reducing the cardiotoxicity to some extent. However, many chemotherapy nanomedicines that are marketed or in R&D have not received enough attention in determining their cardiotoxicity. In general, nanomedicine is an effective method to reduce the cardiotoxicity of traditional chemotherapy drugs. However, cardiovascular complications in cancer treatment are very complex diseases, requiring the application of multiple measures to achieve effective management and prevention.

Ginsenoside Rg3 has effects comparable to those of ginsenoside re on diabetic kidney disease prevention in db/db mice by regulating inflammation, fibrosis and PPARγ.

Ginsenoside Rg3 (Rg3) is an adjuvant antitumor drug, while ginsenoside Re (Re) is an adjuvant antidiabetic drug. Our previous studies demonstrated that Rg3 and Re both have hepatoprotective effects in db/db mice. The present study aimed to observe the renoprotective effects of Rg3 on db/db mice, with Re as the control. The db/db mice were randomly assigned to receive daily oral treatment with Rg3, Re or vehicle for 8 weeks. Body weight and blood glucose were examined weekly. Blood lipids, creatinine, and BUN were examined by biochemical assay. Hematoxylin and eosin and Masson staining were used for pathological examination. The expression of peroxisome proliferator­activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) and inflammation and fibrosis biomarkers was examined by immunohistochemical and reverse transcription­quantitative PCR. Although neither had a significant effect on body weight, blood glucose or lipids, Rg3 and Re were both able to decrease the creatinine and blood urea nitrogen levels of db/db mice to levels similar to those of wild type mice and inhibit pathological changes. The expression of PPARγ was upregulated and biomarkers of inflammation and fibrosis were downregulated by Rg3 and Re. The results showed that the potential of Rg3 as a preventive treatment of diabetic kidney disease was similar to that of Re.

Decoding Coordinated Directions of Bimanual Movements From EEG Signals.

Bimanual coordination is common in human daily life, whereas current research focused mainly on decoding unimanual movement from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. Here we developed a brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigm of task-oriented bimanual movements to decode coordinated directions from movement-related cortical potentials (MRCPs) of EEG. Eight healthy subjects participated in the target-reaching task, including (1) performing leftward, midward, and rightward bimanual movements, and (2) performing leftward and rightward unimanual movements. A combined deep learning model of convolution neural network and bidirectional long short-term memory network was proposed to classify movement directions from EEG. Results showed that the average peak classification accuracy for three coordinated directions of bimanual movements reached 73.39 ± 6.35 %. The binary classification accuracies achieved 80.24 ± 6.25 , 82.62 ± 7.82 , and 86.28 ± 5.50 % for leftward versus midward, rightward versus midward and leftward versus rightward, respectively. We also compared the binary classification (leftward versus rightward) of bimanual, left-hand, and right-hand movements, and accuracies achieved 86.28 ± 5.50 %, 75.67 ± 7.18 %, and 77.79 ± 5.65 %, respectively. The results indicated the feasibility of decoding human coordinated directions of task-oriented bimanual movements from EEG.

Continuous Bimanual Trajectory Decoding of Coordinated Movement From EEG Signals.

While many voluntary movements involve bimanual coordination, few attempts have been made to simultaneously decode the trajectory of bimanual movements from electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. In this study, we proposed a novel bimanual brain-computer interface (BCI) paradigm to reconstruct the continuous trajectory of both hands during coordinated movements from EEG. The protocol required human subjects to complete a bimanual reaching task to the left, middle, or right target while EEG data were collected. A multi-task deep learning model combining the EEGNet and long short-term memory network (LSTM) was proposed to decode bimanual trajectories, including position and velocity. Decoding performance was evaluated in terms of the correlation coefficient (CC) and normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) between decoded and real trajectories. Experimental results from 13 human subjects showed that the grand-averaged combined CC values achieved 0.54 and 0.42 for position and velocity decoding, respectively. The corresponding combined NRMSE values were 0.22 and 0.23. Both CC and NRMSE were significantly superior to the chance level (p<0.05). Comparative experiments also indicated that the proposed model significantly outperformed some other commonly-used methods in terms of CC and NRMSE for continuous trajectory decoding. These findings demonstrated the feasibility of simultaneously decoding bimanual trajectory from EEG, indicating the potential of bimanual control for coordinated tasks.

[Research on panoramic image reconstruction based on oral cone beam computed tomography].

During the automatic reconstruction of panoramic images, the effect of dental arch curve fitting will affect the integrity of the content of the panoramic image. Metal implants in the patient's mouth usually lead to a decrease in the contrast of the panoramic image, which affects the doctor's diagnosis. In this paper, an automatic oral panoramic image reconstruction method was proposed. By calculating key image areas and image extraction fusion algorithms, the dental arch curve could be automatically detected and adjusted on a small number of images, and the intensity distribution of teeth, bone tissue and metal implants on the image could be adjusted to reduce the impact of metal on other tissues, to generate high-quality panoramic images. The method was tested on 50 cases of cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) data with good results, which can effectively improve the quality of panoramic images.

Investigation of the "Nose-to-Brain" Pathways in Intranasal HupA Nanoemulsions and Evaluation of Their in vivo Pharmacokinetics and Brain-Targeting Ability.

Purpose: While developing huperzine A (HupA) to explore new approaches to treating Alzheimer's disease (AD), intranasal administration was proposed as an alternative route to deliver drugs into the brain. This study aimed to prepare nanoemulsions (NEs) of HupA to investigate their potential "nose-to-brain" pathways and to evaluate their pharmacokinetic and brain-targeting parameters. Methods: HupA-NE and Lf-HupA-NE that underwent surface modification with lactoferrin (Lf) were characterized to determine various physicochemical properties, such as their size, PDI, zeta potential, pH, and loading efficiency; in addition, transmission electron microscopy and stability assessments were performed. We utilized an aggregation-caused quenching (ACQ) probe to monitor intact NEs in the brains of olfactory nerve transection model and normal rats. Immunohistochemistry, pharmacokinetic and targeting index analyses were performed to investigate the in vivo effects of HupA-NE and Lf-HupA-NE. Results: Based on the live imaging results, HupA-NE and Lf-HupA-NE could be transported into the brain via nerve and blood circulation pathways. Immunohistochemical staining tests demonstrated that the efflux proteins P-gp, MRP1, and BCRP were expressed in brain tissue. NEs can inhibit efflux pumps to improve drug concentrations in the brain. The findings of this study showed that NEs (especially Lf-HupA-NE) had better pharmacokinetic profiles and a better nose-to-brain drug transport efficiency than free HupA. Conclusion: The newly designed formulations might contribute to the transport and accumulation of HupA to achieve therapeutic results. The delivery system may be a promising strategy for the brain-targeted delivery of HupA.

Characterization of Bimanual Cyclical Tasks From Single-Trial EEG-fNIRS Measurements.

Robot-assisted bimanual training is promising to improve motor function and cortical reorganization for hemiparetic stroke patients. Closing the rehabilitation training loop with neurofeedback can help refine training protocols in time for better engagements and outcomes. However, due to the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and non-stationary properties of neural signals, reliable characterization of bimanual training-induced neural activities from single-trial measurement is challenging. In this study, ten human participants were recruited conducting robot-assisted bimanual cyclical tasks (in-phase, 90° out-of-phase, and anti-phase) when concurrent electroencephalography (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) were recorded. A unified EEG-fNIRS bimodal signal processing framework was proposed to characterize neural activities induced by three types of bimanual cyclical tasks. In this framework, novel artifact removal methods were used to improve the SNR and the task-related component analysis (TRCA) was introduced to increase the reproducibility of EEG-fNIRS bimodal features. The optimized features were transformed into low-dimensional indicators to reliably characterize bimanual training-induced neural activation. The SVM classification results of three bimanual cyclical tasks revealed a good discrimination ability of EEG-fNIRS bimodal indicators (90.1%), which was higher than that using EEG (74.8%) or fNIRS (82.2%) alone, supporting the proposed method as a feasible technique to characterize neural activities during robot-assisted bimanual training.

Ginsenoside Re Improves Inflammation and Fibrosis in Hepatic Tissue by Upregulating PPARγ Expression and Inhibiting Oxidative Stress in db/db Mice.

Ginsenoside Re (Re) is the main component of "Zhenyuan Capsule" (ZYC), which was wildly used in clinic in China for adjunctive treatment of coronary heart disease (CHD) and type II diabetes (T2DM). Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the most important complications of T2DM, as well as an important risk factor of CHD. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of Re on NAFLD in db/db mice, one of the most recognized gene deficient animal models on T2DM. Sixteen db/db mice and sixteen wild-type mice were divided into four groups and orally administered Re or placebo in equal volume. According to the results, Re showed no obvious effect on blood glucose, lipids, or body weight of db/db mice. Histology pictures of hepatic tissue showed that Re did not improve steatosis, too. However, some evidence suggested that hepatic injury in db/db mice was attenuated by Re administering. Collagen deposition and aminotransferase elevation were significantly downregulated in the DB + Re group compared to those in the DB Group. The mechanisms of the protect effects of Re represented in db/db mice with NAFLD might be inhibiting oxidative stress and the reupregulation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (pparγ) expression. The results of this study indicated that ZYC might be able to help T2DM patients with NAFLD to control the progress of NAFLD as an alternation of thiazolidinediones, synthetic agonists of PPARγ, whose side effects and adverse events should not be ignored.

SSVEP-Based Brain-Computer Interface With a Limited Number of Frequencies Based on Dual-Frequency Biased Coding.

How to encode as many targets as possible with a limited-frequency resource is a difficult problem in the practical use of a steady-state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) based brain-computer interface (BCI) speller. To solve this problem, this study developed a novel method called dual-frequency biased coding (DFBC) to tag targets in a SSVEP-based 48-character virtual speller, in which each target is encoded with a permutation sequence consisting of two permuted flickering periods that flash at different frequencies. The proposed paradigm was validated by 11 participants in an offline experiment and 7 participants in an online experiment. Three occipital channels (O1, Oz, and O2) were used to obtain the SSVEP signals for identifying the targets. Based on the coding characteristics of the DFBC method, the proposed approach has the ability of self-correction and thus achieves an accuracy of 76.6% and 79.3% for offline and online experiments, respectively, which outperforms the traditional multiple frequencies sequential coding (MFSC) method. This study demonstrates that DFBC is an efficient method for coding a high number of SSVEP targets with a small number of available frequencies.

Combination of the ginsenosides Rb3 and Rb2 exerts protective effects against myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury in rats.

Ginsenoside Rb3 (G­Rb3) has been demonstrated to alleviate myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury (MIRI); however, it is difficult to separate G­Rb2 from its isomer G­Rb3. The current study aimed to compare the cardioprotective effects of G­Rb3 and the concomitant use of G­Rb3 and G­Rb2 (G­Rb3/Rb2) on MIRI in rats. A rat model of MIRI was established by ligation of the left anterior descending coronary artery and the rats were randomly divided into five groups. Prior to MIRI, G­Rb3/Rb2 (20 mg/kg), G­Rb3 (20 mg/kg) and diltiazem (DLZ; 20 mg/kg, as a positive control) were orally administered to the rats once a day for 3 consecutive days. After 30 min of ischemia and 120 min of reperfusion, cardiac function, infarct size, cardiac marker enzymes, antioxidative parameters, inflammatory factors, histopathological changes, cardiomyocyte apoptosis, and B­cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl­2), Bcl­2­associated X protein and caspase­3 expression were determined using a multi­channel physiological recording system, nitrotetrazolium blue chloride, biochemical kits, radioimmunoassay kits, hematoxylin and eosin, terminal deoxynucleotidyl­transferase­mediated dUTP nick end labeling assay, immunohistochemistry and reverse transcription­quantitative PCR, respectively. The results indicated that treatment with G­Rb3/Rb2 significantly protected rats against MIRI, as shown by improved cardiac function, reduced myocardial ischemic area, decreased serum activities of aspartate aminotransferase, lactate dehydrogenase and creatine kinase MB, decreased serum concentrations of interleukin­6 and tumor necrosis factor­α, decreased malondialdehyde concentration in myocardial tissues, increased activities of superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase and catalase in myocardial tissues, reduced histopathological changes in myocardial tissues, reduced number of apoptotic cardiomyocytes, and changes in the expression levels of caspase­3, Bcl­2 and Bax. In addition, the effects of treatment with G­Rb3/Rb2, G­Rb3 or DLZ were equivalent. The protective effects of G­Rb3/Rb2 on MIRI were similar to those of G­Rb3 in terms of oxidative stress, inflammatory factors and inhibition of cardiomyocyte apoptosis. Therefore, G­Rb3/Rb2 may be developed as a concomitant treatment for MIRI.

Ginsenoside Rg3 Attenuates Angiotensin II-Mediated Renal Injury in Rats and Mice by Upregulating Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 in the Renal Tissue.

Angiotensin II- (Ang II-) mediated renal injury represents a major pathogenetic mechanism in most chronic kidney diseases. Our previous research demonstrated that ginsenoside Rg3 (Rg3) attenuates Ang II elevation in the myocardium in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). It is possible that Rg3 has similar effects in the renal tissue. In this research, we first demonstrated that Rg3 could attenuate Ang II increase in the kidney of SHR and reduce hypertensive nephropathy progression. Then, we found that Rg3 attenuated Ang II increase by upregulating angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in the renal tissue. We confirmed this finding in an exogenous Ang II-infused mice model of renal injury, and two models showed consistent results. In conclusion, Rg3 attenuates Ang II-mediated renal injury in rats and mice by upregulating ACE2 in the renal tissue. This research is the first to demonstrate that Rg3 increases tissue ACE2 levels in vivo.

Training -Free Steady-State Visual Evoked Potential Brain-Computer Interface Based on Filter Bank Canonical Correlation Analysis and Spatiotemporal Beamforming Decoding.

A brain-computer interface (BCI) provides a novel non-muscular communication pathway for individuals with severe neuromuscular diseases. BCI systems based on steady-state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) have high classification accuracy, information transfer rate, and signal-to-noise ratio, giving them high research and application value. However, SSVEP-based BCI has several limitations in real-world applications. The main challenge is how to reduce or eliminate the need for a dedicated training process while maintaining high classification accuracy. Filter bank canonical correlation analysis (FBCCA) is a powerful and widely used feature extraction method for SSVEP-based BCI systems. However, the reference signals of FBCCA are fixed-frequency sine-cosine waves, which makes it difficult to accurately describe the complex, mutative, and individually different physiological SSVEPs. Therefore, there is huge room for improvement in classification performance based on the FBCCA method. In contrast, although spatiotemporal beamforming (BF) detects SSVEPs with high accuracy, it needs an additional training process, which limits its application. In this study, we propose a bimodal decoding algorithm (FBCCA+BF), which combines the advantages of the training-free classification of FBCCA and the data-driven and adaptive features of BF. Six-channel SSVEP data corresponding to eight targets measured from 15 subjects were used to test the effectiveness of three different CCA-based methods, BF, and our proposed FBCCA+BF methods. It was found that the classification accuracies for BF and FBCCA+BF are 95.6% and 92.2%, respectively, which are significantly higher than the other CCA-based methods. Notably, both BF and FBCCA+BF obtain state-of-the-art performance, but FBCCA+BF does this without the need for a dedicated training process. Therefore, we conclude that our proposed FBCCA+BF method provides a training-free and high-accuracy approach for SSVEP-based BCIs.

Ginsenoside Re Attenuates Isoproterenol-Induced Myocardial Injury in Rats.

Objective. Panax ginseng is widely used for treatment of cardiovascular disorders in China. Ginsenoside Re is the main chemical component of Panax ginseng. This study aimed to investigate the protective effect of Ginsenoside Re on isoproterenol-induced myocardial injury in rats. Methods. Male Wistar rats were orally given Ginsenoside Re (5, 20 mg/kg) daily for 7 days. Isoproterenol was subcutaneously injected into the rats for two consecutive days at a dosage of 20 mg/kg/day (on 6th and 7th day). Six hours after the last isoproterenol injection, troponin T level and creatine kinase-MB (CK-MB) activity were assayed. Histopathological examination of heart tissues was performed. The levels of malondialdehyde (MDA) and glutathione (GSH) in heart tissues were measured. The nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (Nrf2) content in nucleus and the proteins of glutathione cysteine ligase catalytic subunit (GCLC) and glutathione cysteine ligase modulatory subunit (GCLM) in heart tissues were assayed by western blotting method. Results. Treatment with Ginsenoside Re at dose of 5, 20 mg/kg reduced troponin T level and CK-MB activity of rats subjected to isoproterenol. The cardioprotective effect of Ginsenoside Re was further confirmed by histopathological examination which showed that Ginsenoside Re attenuated the necrosis and inflammatory cells infiltration. Ginsenoside Re inhibited the increase of MDA content and the decrease of GSH in heart tissues. Moreover, the Nrf2 content in nucleus and the expressions of GCLC and GCLM were significantly increased in the animals treated with Ginsenoside Re. Conclusion. These findings suggested that Ginsenoside Re possesses the property to attenuate isoproterenol-induced myocardial ischemic injury by regulating the antioxidation function in cardiomyocytes.

Ginsenoside Rg3 induces ginsenoside Rb1-comparable cardioprotective effects independent of reducing blood pressure in spontaneously hypertensive rats.

Ginsenoside Rg3 (Rg3) is a rare type of ginsenoside used as an anti-tumor medicine in China. Ginsenoside Rb1 (Rb1), which exhibits protective effects on the cardiovascular system, is similar to Rg3 in chemical structure. In the present study, Rb1 and Rg3 were administered for 6 weeks to spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and their cardioprotective effects were assessed. According to echocardiography and histopathological examinations, the decrease in cardiac function and ventricular remodeling that occurred in SHR rats were attenuated by Rb1 and Rg3. However, tail-cuff blood pressure measurements indicated that Rb1 and Rg3 did not reduce blood pressure in SHR rats. The cardioprotective effects of Rb1 and Rg3 occurred independently of blood pressure reduction. Furthermore, immunohistochemistry (IHC) revealed that renin angiotensin system (RAS) activity in the myocardium of SHR was significantly attenuated by Rb1 and Rg3, whereas ELISA identified no significant changes of RAS activity in the serum. The results of IHC and reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction demonstrated that levels of transforming growth factor ß1, tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-6, interleukin-1 and endothelian-1 in the myocardium of SHR rats were reduced following Rb1 and Rg3 treatment. This may be due to the attenuation of RAS activity in the myocardium and the mechanisms of the cardioprotective effects of Rb1 and Rg3.

Toward Efficient Team Formation for Crowdsourcing in Noncooperative Social Networks.

Crowdsourcing has become a popular service computing paradigm for requesters to integrate the ubiquitous human-intelligence services for tasks that are difficult for computers but trivial for humans. This paper focuses on crowdsourcing complex tasks by team formation in social networks (SNs) where a requester connects to a large number of workers. A good indicator of efficient team collaboration is the social connection among workers. Most previous social team formation approaches, however, either assume that the requester can maintain information of all workers and can directly communicate with them to build teams, or assume that the workers are cooperative and be willing to join the specific team built by the requester, both of which are impractical in many real situations. To this end, this paper first models each worker as a selfish entity, where the requester prefers to hire inexpensive workers that require less payment and workers prefer to join the profitable teams where they can gain high revenue. Within the noncooperative SNs, a distributed negotiation-based team formation mechanism is designed for the requester to decide which worker to hire and for the worker to decide which team to join and how much should be paid for his skill service provision. The proposed social team formation approach can always build collaborative teams by allowing team members to form a connected graph such that they can work together efficiently. Finally, we conduct a set of experiments on real dataset of workers to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach. The experimental results show that our approach can: 1) preserve considerable social welfare by comparing the benchmark centralized approaches and 2) form the profitable teams within less negotiation time by comparing the traditional distributed approaches, making our approach a more economic option for real-world applications.