[Adipocytic Endogenous Hydrogen Sulfide-Function,Regulation and Diseases].

Hydrogen sulfide (H2S)is a novel gastrotransmitter, and plays a protective role in many diseases. Adipocyte endogenously produces H2S by cystathionine β synthase (CBS), cystathionine γ lyase (CSE) and 3-mercaptopyruvate sulfurtransferase (MPST).The endogenous H2S in adipocyte plays an essential role in glucose uptake activity and utilization, lipolysis and adipocyte differentiation, and then takes part in the pathogenesis of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.

Preparation of Thermo-Responsive and Cross-Linked Fluorinated Nanoparticles via RAFT-Mediated Aqueous Polymerization in Nanoreactors.

In this work, a thermo-responsive and cross-linked fluoropolymer poly(2,2,2-Trifluoroethyl) methacrylate (PTFEMA) was successfully prepared by reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) mediated aqueous polymerization with a thermo-responsive diblock poly(dimethylacrylamide---isopropylacrylamide) (PDMA--PNIPAM) that performed a dual function as both a nanoreactor and macro-RAFT agent. The cross-linked polymer particles proved to be in a spherical-like structure of about 50 nm in diameter and with a relatively narrow particle size distribution. ¹H-NMR and F-NMR spectra showed that thermo-responsive diblock P(DMA--NIPAM) and cross-linked PTFEMA particles were successfully synthesized.

Single-layer dual-phase nematic elastomer films with bending, accordion-folding, curling and buckling motions.

In this communication, we describe a two-stage temperature-varied photopatterning protocol to synthesize a series of single-layer dual-phase liquid crystalline elastomer films, which have the capabilities to perform versatile three-dimensional motions, such as bending, accordion-folding, wrinkling, curling, and buckling, under thermal stimulus.

Highly Water-Stable Novel Lanthanide Wheel Cluster Organic Frameworks Featuring Coexistence of Hydrophilic Cagelike Chambers and Hydrophobic Nanosized Channels.

In attempts to investigate the potential luminescent sensing materials for sensitive detection of environmental pollutants, a new family of lanthanide wheel cluster organic frameworks (Ln-WCOFs) UJN-Ln4 has been constructed by employing one of the cycloalkane dicarboxylic acid derivatives. Adopting different conformations, the ligand links Ln second building units (SBUs) and Ln tertiary building units (TBUs) to form a unique wheel cluster layer-pillared 3D framework featuring the coexistence of hydrophobic nanosized channels and trigonal antiprism arrays with hydrophilic cagelike chambers. Apart from charming structures, isostructural UJN-Ln4 displays interesting porous, water-stable features.

Oncometabolite succinate promotes angiogenesis by upregulating VEGF expression through GPR91-mediated STAT3 and ERK activation.

Altered cellular metabolism is now generally acknowledged as a hallmark of cancer cells, the resultant abnormal oncometabolites cause both metabolic and nonmetabolic dysregulation and potential transformation to malignancy. A subset of cancers have been found to be associated with mutations in succinate dehydrogenase genes which result in the accumulation of succinate. However, the function of succinate in tumorigenesis remains unclear.

New Plants from the Lower Devonian Pingyipu Group, Jiangyou County, Sichuan Province, China.

Descriptions of Lower Devonian plants from Yunnan, South China, have revolutionized concepts of diversity and disparity in tracheophytes soon after they became established on land. Sichuan assemblages have received little attention since their discovery almost 25 years ago and require revision. With this objective, fieldwork involving detailed logging and collection of fossils was undertaken in the Longmenshan Mountain Region, Jiangyou County and yielded the two new taxa described here.

Facile Growth of High-Yield Gold Nanobipyramids Induced by Chloroplatinic Acid for High Refractive Index Sensing Properties.

Au nanobipyramids (NBPs) have attracted great attention because of their unique localized surface plasmon resonance properties. However, the current growth methods always have low yield or suffer tedious process. Developing new ways to direct synthesis of high-yield Au NBPs using common agents is therefore desirable.

The effect of vocal fold vertical stiffness variation on voice production.

A parametric study was conducted using the numerical technique that coupled a three-dimensional continuum vocal fold model with a one-dimensional Bernoulli flow model to investigate the effect of vocal fold vertical stiffness variation on voice production. Vertical stiffness gradient was defined as the ratio of the inferior-superior stiffness difference to the mean stiffness and was introduced in the cover layer. The results showed that increasing the vertical stiffness gradient would increase the peak flow rate and sound intensity and decrease the open quotient and threshold pressure.

Recalcitrant Verrucae in Patients With DOCK8 Deficiency.

An 18-year-old Caucasian man presented with extensive recalcitrant verrucae on his trunk and extremities that were unresponsive to cryotherapy, salicylic acid, topical imiquimod, CO laser, candida antigen, and intralesional bleomycin. He had a diagnosis of hyperimmunoglobulin E syndrome until 2011, when he was determined to have DOCK8 immunodeficiency after genetic testing at the National Institutes of Health. In addition to verrucae, he had a personal history of eczematous dermatitis, osteomyelitis, molluscum infections, cutaneous abscesses, recurrent pneumonia, and severe food allergy.

Narrow Intercondylar Notch and Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury in Female Nonathletes with Knee Osteoarthritis Aged 41-65 Years in Plateau Region.

Background: Few data are available concerning intercondylar notch dimensions in female nonathletes with knee osteoarthritis (OA) in plateau region. The aim of this study was to assess the relation of intercondylar notch morphology to anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries in female nonathletes with knee OA aged 41-65 years from the Chinese Loess Plateau.

Methods: The study was conducted on 330 patients with ACL injury (aged 31-65 years; 159 males, 171 females), 141 patients with OA (aged 31-65 years; 59 males, 82 females), and 89 female healthy controls (aged 41-65 years), and this evaluation included identifying the distribution of patients with OA or ACL injury and measuring the intercondylar notch width indexes (NWIs).

The remanence ratio in CoFeO nanoparticles with approximate single-domain sizes.

Approximately single-domain-sized 9-, 13-, and 16-nm CoFeO nanoparticles are synthesized using the thermal decomposition of a metal-organic salt. By means of dilution and reduction, the concentration, moment, and anisotropy of nanoparticles are changed and their influence on the magnetic properties is investigated. The relation of M /M  ∝ 1/lgH is observed, where M /M is the remanence ratio and H is the maximum dipolar field.

Synthesis and Modification of Zn-doped TiO2 Nanoparticles for the Photocatalytic Degradation of Tetracycline.

The synthesis of Zn-doped TiO2 nanoparticles by solgel method was investigated in this study, as well as its modification by H2 O2 . The catalyst was characterized by transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Brunauer-Emmett-Teller, UV-visible reflectance spectra and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The results indicated that doping Zn into TiO2 nanoparticles could inhibit the transformation from anatase phase to rutile phase.

Hydrothermal Synthesis of a rGO Nanosheet Enwrapped NiFe Nanoalloy for Superior Electrocatalytic Oxygen Evolution Reactions.

Graphene-based hybrid nanostructures possess many advantages in the field of electrochemical energy applications. In this work, a facile and efficient hydrothermal approach has been developed for the preparation of NiFe alloy nanoparticles/rGO hybrid nanostructures, in which the nanoparticles are well combined with rGO nanosheets and the size of the nanoparticles is about 100 nm. Moreover, the electrochemical oxygen evolution reaction (OER) tests confirmed that the obtained NiFe/rGO hybrid nanostructures possess notably higher activity than both the rGO-free NiFe nanoparticles and pure Ni/rGO hybrids, and the optimal NiFe ratio is 2:1.

Simultaneous tunable structure and composition of PtAg alloyed nanocrystals as superior catalysts.

PtAg alloyed nanostructural catalysts were firstly prepared by co-reduction of AgNO3 and H2PtCl6 precursors in growth solution using a seed-mediated method. By simply changing the molar ratio of the metal precursors, the morphologies of the porous alloyed nanocrystals can be tuned from multipetals to multioctahedra. Simultaneously, the alloy composition can be varied from Pt76Ag24 to Pt66Ag34.

Preparation and characterization of iron-copper binary oxide and its effective removal of antimony(III) from aqueous solution.

An Fe-Cu binary oxide was fabricated through a simple co-precipitation process, and was used to remove Sb(III) from aqueous solution. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive X-ray and N2 adsorption-desorption measurements demonstrated that the Fe-Cu binary oxide consisted of poorly ordered ferrihydrite and CuO, and its specific surface area was higher than both iron oxide and copper oxide. A comparative test indicated that Fe/Cu molar ratio of prepared binary oxide greatly influenced Sb(III) removal and the optimum Fe/Cu molar ratio was about 3/1.

Porous Mn2 O3 : A Low-Cost Electrocatalyst for Oxygen Reduction Reaction in Alkaline Media with Comparable Activity to Pt/C.

Preparing nonprecious metal catalysts with high activity in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) can promote the development of energy conversion devices. Support-free porous Mn2 O3 was synthesized by a facile aerosol-spray-assisted approach (ASAA) and subsequent thermal treatment, and exhibited ORR activity that is comparable to commercial Pt/C The catalyst also exhibits notably higher activity than other Mn-based oxides, such as Mn3 O4 and MnO2 . The rotating ring disk electrode (RRDE) study indicates a typical 4-electron ORR pathway on Mn2 O3 .

[The progress of Long Noncoding RNAs in Cardiovascular Diseases].

Cardiovascular disease is a common disease that threatens the health of human beings,espe-cially elders.The number of people dying from cardiovascular diseases annually ranks top one in the world-wide.Long noncoding RNAs (LncRNAs)is a big group of ncRNAs with nucleotides length >200 nt,and its numbers is most in the body.

Formation of the Si-B bond: insertion reactions of silylenes into B-X(X = F, Cl, Br, O, and N) bonds.

The insertion reactions of the silylene H2Si with H2BXHn-1 (X = F, Cl, Br, O, N; n = 1, 1, 1, 2, 3) have been studied by DFT and MP2 methods. The calculations show that the insertions occur in a concerted manner, forming H2Si(BH2)(XHn-1). The essences of H2Si insertions with H2BXHn-1 are the transfers of the σ electrons on the Si atom to the positive BH2 group and the electrons of X into the empty p orbital on the Si atom in H2Si.

Intercondylar Notch Stenosis of Knee Osteoarthritis and Relationship between Stenosis and Osteoarthritis Complicated with Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury: A Study in MRI.

The aim of this study was to research whether the patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA) exist intercondylar notch stenosis and the relationship between stenosis and OA complicated with anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).A total of 79 cases of moderate-severe OA patients and 71 cases of healthy people were collected; among these OA patients, 38 were OA complicated with ACL injury and 41 were simple OA. The intercondylar notch was divided into A, U, and W types according to the notch shape in the axial sequence of MRI.

Development of a UFLC-MS/MS method for the simultaneous determination of seven tea catechins in rat plasma and its application to a pharmacokinetic study after administration of green tea extract.

A rapid, sensitive and selective ultra-fast liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UFLC-MS/MS) method was developed and validated for simultaneous determination of seven green tea catechins including catechin (C), (-)-epicatechin (EC), gallocatechin (GC), (-)-epigallocatechin (EGC), (-)-epicatechin-3-gallate (ECG), gallocatechin-3-gallate (GCG) and (-)-epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) in rat plasma. The plasma samples were firstly hydrolysed with the mixture of β-glucuronidase and sulfatase, which were then extracted by liquid-liquid extraction with ethyl acetate-isopropanol (1:1, v/v). The analytes were separated on a Venusil MP C18 column (Venusil, China) with a gradient elution at a flow rate of 0.

The vasodilatory effect of sulfur dioxide via SGC/cGMP/PKG pathway in association with sulfhydryl-dependent dimerization.

The present study was designed to explore the role of soluble guanylate cyclase (sGC)/cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP)/PKG pathway in sulfur dioxide (SO2)-induced vasodilation. We showed that SO2 induced a concentration-dependent relaxation of phenylephrine (PE)-precontracted rat aortic rings in association with an increase in cGMP concentration, whereas l-aspartic acid β-hydroxamate (HDX), an inhibitor of SO2 synthase, contracted rings in a dose-dependent manner. Pretreatment of aortic rings with the sGC inhibitor ODQ (30 μM) attenuated the vasodilatory effects of SO2, suggesting the involvement of cGMP pathway in SO2-induced vasodilation.

Study on clear stereo image pair acquisition method for small objects with big vertical size in SLM vision system.

Microscopic vision system with stereo light microscope (SLM) has been applied to surface profile measurement. If the vertical size of a small object exceeds the range of depth, its images will contain clear and fuzzy image regions. Hence, in order to obtain clear stereo images, we propose a microscopic sequence image fusion method which is suitable for SLM vision system.

Cystathionine γ lyase-hydrogen sulfide increases peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ activity by sulfhydration at C139 site thereby promoting glucose uptake and lipid storage in adipocytes.

Adipocytes express the cystathionine γ lyase (CSE)-hydrogen sulfide (H2S) system. CSE-H2S promotes adipogenesis but ameliorates adipocyte insulin resistance. We investigated the mechanism of how CSE-H2S induces these paradoxical effects.

New Family of Octagonal-Prismatic Lanthanide Coordination Cages Assembled from Unique Ln17 Clusters and Simple Cliplike Dicarboxylate Ligands.

Novel high-nuclearity lanthanide clusters (Ln17) are generated in situ in the coordination-driven self-assembly. A metal-cluster-directed symmetry strategy for building metal coordination cages is successfully applied to a lanthanide system for the first time. A new family of octagonal-prismatic lanthanide coordination cages UJN-Ln, formulated as [Ln(μ3-OH)8][Ln16(μ4-O)(μ4-OH)(μ3-OH)8(H2O)8(μ4-dcd)8][(μ3-dcd)8]·22H2O (Ln = Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, and Er; dcd = 3,3-dimethylcyclopropane-1,2-dicarboxylate dianion), have been assembled from the unique Ln17 clusters and simple cliplike ligand H2dcd.