Publications by authors named "Mingxu Zhao"

Postoperative pain (POP) is a major clinical challenge. Local anesthetics (LAs), including amide-type LAs, ester-type LAs, and other potential ion-channel blockers, are emerging as drugs for POP management because of their effectiveness and affordability. However, LAs typically exhibit short durations of action and prolonging the duration by increasing their dosage or concentration may increase the risk of motor block or systemic local anesthetic toxicity.

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Article Synopsis
  • Atrazine is a common herbicide that can contaminate soil and hurt certain crops, so researchers explored a solution using biochar with a special bacteria that breaks down atrazine.* -
  • The use of this bacterially loaded biochar (BBC) showed a significant improvement in reducing atrazine levels in both planted and unplanted soils, promoting healthier crop growth.* -
  • Findings indicated that BBC not only helped soybeans grow better by enhancing their biomass and antioxidant responses but also reduced the negative effects of atrazine, showcasing its potential for sustainable farming practices.*
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Tumor ablation can cause severe pain to patients, but there is no satisfactory means of analgesia available. In addition, recurrence of residual tumors due to incomplete ablation threatens patient safety. Photothermal therapy (PTT), a promising approach for tumor ablation, also faces the aforementioned problems.

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Postoperative pain (POP) can promote tumor recurrence and reduce the cancer patient's quality of life. However, POP management has always been separated from tumor treatment in clinical practice, and traditional postoperative analgesia using opioids is still unsatisfactory for patients, which is not conducive to tumor treatment. Here, ropivacaine, a popular amide-type LA, was introduced into a Pluronic F127 hydrogel.

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The wide disparity in outcomes of Alzheimer's disease (AD) treatment from preclinical to clinical studies suggests an urgent need for more effective therapeutic targets and approaches to treat AD. CaMKII is a potential target for AD therapy; however, conflicting reports on the relationship between CaMKII and AD suggest a lack of deeper understanding of the interaction between CaMKII and AD. In addition to the lack of effective therapeutic targets, pharmacokinetic limitations of neuroprotective drugs, such as low lipophilicity to cross blood brain barrier, need to be urgently addressed in the practice of AD therapy.

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A single small population of chasmophytic plants is described as a monotypic genus in the subtribe Crepidinae, characterised by a unique combination of morphological features, in particular densely long-papillose homomorphic achenes with five main ribs each accompanied by two secondary ribs, coarse brownish pappus bristles, moderately many-flowered capitula, a small involucre with numerous outer phyllaries, perennial rosette herb growth and brown-woolly caudex and leaf axils. Molecular phylogenetic analysis detected that in the nrITS phylogeny forms a clade of its own in the Crepidinae; in the plastid DNA phylogeny it is nested in the clade formed by the hybridogenous genus the maternal ancestor of which comes from the Crepidinae and the paternal ancestor from the Lactucinae, where is placed in nrITS phylogenies. shares several morphological features with and also shares the expected chromosome number of 2n = 16 with its hitherto unknown maternal ancestor.

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Biodiversity conservation is a required co-benefit of REDD+. Biodiversity monitoring is therefore needed, yet in most areas it will be constrained by limitations in the available human professional and financial resources. REDD+ programs that use forest plots for biomass monitoring may be able to take advantage of the same data for detecting changes in the tree diversity, using the richness and abundance of canopy trees as a proxy for biodiversity.

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This study aims to investigate whether the cultivation peony, can take the place of wild herbaceous peony by comparing the biological traits and paeoniflorin content between them. The result showed that the biomass of the stem, leaf, crown, fleshy root and fine root of wild plants were all smaller than that of bud asexual cultivated plants, while there was no significant differences in below-ground and aboveground biomass ratio between these two plants. The stele diameter, the proportion of stele, and the ratio of stele diameter to cortex thickness of wild plants were significantly higher than that of bud asexual cultivated plants, while the cortex thickness and the proportion of cortex were significantly smaller than bud asexual cultivated plants.

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Vascular epiphytes are an understudied and particularly important component of tropical forest ecosystems. However, owing to the difficulties of access, little is known about the properties of epiphyte-host tree communities and the factors structuring them, especially in Asia. We investigated factors structuring the vascular epiphyte-host community and its network properties in a tropical montane forest in Xishuangbanna, SW China.

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Based on the long-term cutting experiment, this paper analyzed the responses of the aboveground biomass of five dominant and subdominant plant species and the community stability in a Stipa krylovii steppe of Inner Mongolia to various cutting height. Cutting with a stubble height of > 10 cm had slight effects on the aboveground biomass of the five species. Cutting with a stubble height of 10 cm benefited the growth of Artemisia frigida but made against the growth of Stipa krylovii.

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