The water extract of Amydrium sinense (Engl.) H. Li ameliorates Isoproterenol-induced cardiac hypertrophy through inhibiting the NF-κB signaling pathway.

OBJECTIVE: Pathologic cardiac hypertrophy (PCH) is a precursor to heart failure. Amydrium sinense (Engl.) H. Li (AS), a traditional Chinese medicinal plant, has been extensively utilized to treat chronic inflammatory diseases. However, the therapeutic effect of ASWE on PCH and its underlying mechanisms are still not fully understood. METHODS: A cardiac hypertrophy model was established by treating C57BL/6 J mice and neonatal rat cardiomyocytes (NRCMs) in vitro with isoprenaline (ISO) in this study. The antihypertrophic effects of AS water extract (ASWE) on cardiac function, histopathologic manifestations, cell surface area and expression levels of hypertrophic biomarkers were examined. Subsequently, the impact of ASWE on inflammatory factors, p65 nuclear translocation and NF-κB activation was investigated to elucidate the underlying mechanisms. RESULTS: In the present study, we observed that oral administration of ASWE effectively improved ISO-induced cardiac hypertrophy in mice, as evidenced by histopathological manifestations and the expression levels of hypertrophic markers. Furthermore, the in vitro experiments demonstrated that ASWE treatment inhibited cardiac hypertrophy and suppressed inflammation response in ISO-treated NRCMs. Mechanically, our findings provided evidence that ASWE suppressed inflammation response by repressing p65 nuclear translocation and NF-κB activation. ASWE was found to possess the capability of inhibiting inflammation response and cardiac hypertrophy induced by ISO. CONCLUSION: To sum up, ASWE treatment was shown to attenuate ISO-induced cardiac hypertrophy by inhibiting cardiac inflammation via preventing the activation of the NF-kB signaling pathway. These findings provided scientific evidence for the development of ASWE as a novel therapeutic drug for PCH treatment.

Group technology empowering optimization of mixed-flow precast production in off-site construction.

Faced with immense pressure to reduce environmental impact, off-site construction (OSC) is considered a sustainable alternative to conventional practices. However, challenged by component diversity and a significant surge in demand, deficient or empirical-based scheduling management struggles to effectively harness the potential of mixed-flow precast production to improve efficiency, instead resulting in environmental impacts, and falling short of expected benefits in OSC projects. Therefore, this study addresses the conflict between efficiency and environmental impact arising from the application of mixed-flow precast production by integrating multi-objective optimization and group technology. A multi-objective optimization framework is proposed, incorporating grouping technology for mixed-flow precast production scheduling and aiming to minimize carbon emissions and reduce tardiness/earliness penalty. The non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm II (NSGA-II), adjusted by adaptive population initialization strategy and group technology, is introduced to solve this problem, striking a balance between sustainability and penalty costs. Through a real-case analysis, the proposed approach demonstrates an average reduction of 37.5% in carbon emissions compared to rule-based scheduling methods, a 30.1% reduction compared to previous research methods, along with over 10% reduction in tardiness/earliness penalty. This study enhances environmental benefits and efficiency from a production scheduling perspective and establishes an automated, practical method, fostering low-cost, high-efficiency green production for construction component enterprises, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises, thereby promoting sustainable development in the construction industry.