Publications by authors named "Zhen-Peng Xu"

Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Thesium chinense Turcz., a traditional Chinese herbal medicine, displays good therapeutic efficiency against respiratory diseases (e.g.

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Three new compounds 1-glyceryl 9(), 10(), 11()-trihydroxy-12()-octadecenoate, 2'-20---hydroxyphenylpropionyloxy-20-hyd-roxyarachidic acid glycerol ester (), 3---l-arabinopyranosyl-(1→6)--d-glucopyranoside of ethyl (3)-hydroxybutanoate (), as well as a new natural product () were isolated from the fruits of L. The structures of 26 compounds were determined by comprehensive spectroscopic analyses, NMR calculation, chemical methods, and comparisons of spectroscopic data. Compounds and exhibited good anti-inflammatory activity in the LPS-induced RAW 264.

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Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a persistent inflammatory condition affecting the bowels. Gegen Qinlian decoction (GQD) has been widely used in the therapy of gastrointestinal diseases. We investigated the protective impacts and mechanism of GQD against UC.

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Background: Pulmonary fibrosis is a chronic and advancing interstitial lung disease, and there is an urgent need for novel agents for its therapy. Physalis Calyx seu Fructus (PCF) has been utilized in traditional Chinese medicine to treat respiratory disorders with a long history, however, the therapeutic effect and mechanism of PCF against pulmonary fibrosis are still unclear.

Purpose: To assess therapeutic efficacy and underlying mechanism of 75 % ethanol extract of PCF (PCF-EtOH) against pulmonary fibrosis, as well as to discover active constituents in PCF.

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Armed with quantum correlations, quantum sensors in a network have shown the potential to outclass their classical counterparts in distributed sensing tasks such as clock synchronization and reference frame alignment. On the other hand, this analysis was done for simple and idealized networks, whereas the correlation shared within a practical quantum network, captured by the notion of network states, is much more complex. Here, we prove a general bound that limits the performance of using quantum network states to estimate a global parameter, establishing the necessity of genuine multipartite entanglement for achieving a quantum advantage.

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We show that some sets of quantum observables are unique up to an isometry and have a contextuality witness that attains the same value for any initial state. We prove that these two properties make it possible to certify any of these sets by looking at the statistics of experiments with sequential measurements and using any initial state of full rank, including thermal and maximally mixed states. We prove that this "certification with any full-rank state" (CFR) is possible for any quantum system of finite dimension d≥3 and is robust and experimentally useful in dimensions 3 and 4.

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We present an approach to estimate the operational distinguishability between an entangled state and any separable state directly from measuring an entanglement witness. We show that this estimation also implies bounds on a variety of other well-known entanglement quantifiers. This approach for entanglement estimation is then extended to both the measurement-device-independent scenario and the fully device-independent scenario, where we obtain nontrivial but suboptimal bounds.

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Ethnopharmacological Relevance: Ding-Chuan-Tang (Abbreviated as DCT) is frequently prescribed for treatment of respiratory diseases, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), which is characterized by coughing, wheezing, and chest tightness in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). However, the potential mechanism of DCT has not been investigated.

Aim Of Study: The aim of the study is to explore the efficiency of DCT in the treatment of COPD in vivo and in vitro, and to illustrate the possible mechanism against COPD.

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Five new sesquiterpenoids, dictamtrinorguaianols E and F (1-2), and dictameudesmnosides F, G, and H (3-5), along with seven known sesquiterpenoids (6-12) were isolated from Dictamnus dasycarpus Turcz. The structures of all new compounds were characterized by spectroscopic methods, including UV, IR, HR-ESI-MS, and 1D and 2D NMR. The In-vitro anti-proliferative activities of all the compounds against two human cancer cell lines (SW982 and A549) were evaluated by CCK-8 assay.

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Ethnopharmacological Relevance: In many famous formulas of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the rhizome of Ligusticum chuanxiong (L. chuanxiong) is commonly used as an ingredient for promoting blood circulation and resolving blood stasis to treat diabetic nephropathy. However, its material basis and mechanism of action are still needed to be explored.

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Eleven compounds were isolated and identified from ethanolic extracts of fruits, including two new compounds (-) and nine known compounds (-). Their structures were determined to be melongenaterpene C15---D-glucopyranoside (), (9)-3,7,11,15-tetramethyl -hexadeca-1,6,10-triene-3,5,14,15-tetraol-5---D-glucopyranoside (), actini-dioionoside A (), byzantionoside B (), citroside A (), 7Z-roseoside (), matenoside A (), megastigmane (), dihydrophaseic acid 3'---D-glucopyranoside (), taraxerol (), and huzhangoside C (). In this paper, NMR spectroscopy was used to study the structures of the compounds, comparing their data with those in the literature.

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The Suntuan mining area of Huaibei is a typical coal resource mining base in the Huainan-Huaibei areas in North China. Previous environmental studies related to surface dust in coal mining areas mainly focused on heavy metals and water-soluble ions, with little research on polycyclic aromatic compounds (PACs). In this study, gas chromatography-triple tandem quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) was used to determine the contents of 16 parent polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (16PAHs), alkyl polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (aPAHs), and some oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (OPAHs) in surface dust from the Suntuan mining area and surrounding environment.

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Contextuality is a distinctive feature of quantum theory and a fundamental resource for quantum computation. However, existing examples of contextuality in high-dimensional systems lack the necessary robustness required in experiments. Here, we address this problem by identifying a family of noncontextuality inequalities whose maximum quantum violation grows with the dimension of the system.

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Objective: In this study, we investigated the impact of Zibai ointment on wound healing by analyzing the expression levels of two key apoptosis-related factors-B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) and Bcl-2-associated X protein (Bax), in patients following surgery for anal fistula.

Methods: We included 90 patients with anal fistulas who were treated in the People's Hospital Affiliated to Fujian University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Patients were randomly assigned to receive treatment with Zibai ointment (n = 45) or petroleum jelly (n = 45).

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Two new compounds ( and ), along with thirty-one known compounds (-) were isolated from the fruits of . The structure of isolates was elucidated by analysis of spectroscopic data and the physicochemical methods. Meanwhile, the anti-inflammatory activity of isolates was determined using LPS-induced RAW 264.

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Despite the conceptual importance of contextuality in quantum mechanics, there is a hitherto limited number of applications requiring contextuality but not entanglement. Here, we show that for any quantum state and observables of sufficiently small dimensions producing contextuality, there exists a communication task with quantum advantage. Conversely, any quantum advantage in this task admits a proof of contextuality whenever an additional condition holds.

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Eight undescribed steroidal saponins named solasaponins A-H were isolated from the fruits of Solanum xanthocarpum, including an unusual 16,26-epoxy-furostanol saponin, two furostanol saponins, three isospirostanol saponins, two pseudo-spirostanol saponins. The structures of all compounds were elucidated by extensive spectroscopic data analyses (1D, 2D NMR, and HRESIMS) combined with physico-chemical analysis methods (acid hydrolysis, optical rotation, and IR). The cytotoxicities of all compounds in vitro against two human cancer cell lines (A-549 and HepG2) were evaluated by CCK-8 assay.

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Bioactive lipids widely found in daily consumed plants and animals are essential or beneficial to health and some of them are important physiological regulators in the human body. In our current investigation, 18 bioactive lipids (1-18), including 8 sphingolipids (1-8), 7 oxylipins (9-15), 3 phenolic lipids (16-18) were isolated from the fruits of Solanum xanthocarpum. And compounds 1, 9, 15, 16, and 18 were new lipids.

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Quantum networks are promising tools for the implementation of long-range quantum communication. The characterization of quantum correlations in networks and their usefulness for information processing is therefore central for the progress of the field, but so far only results for small basic network structures or pure quantum states are known. Here we show that symmetries provide a versatile tool for the analysis of correlations in quantum networks.

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Two new ecdysteroids 14-epi-polypodine B (1) and 22-oxo-hydroxyecdysterone (2), along with nine known compounds, polypodine B (3), viticosterone E (4), 20-hdroxyecdysone-2-acetate (5), 22-oxo-20-hydroxyecdysone (6), 5-hydroxyecdysone (7), pinnatasterone (8), 3-epi-20-hydroxyecdysone (9), ecdysterone (10) and stachysterone B (11), were isolated from the aerial parts of Paris verticillata. The structures of all compounds were elucidated by extensive spectroscopic analysis, quantum chemical calculations and ANN-PRA/DP4 probability analysis. Among them, the absolute configuration of compound 1 and 2 was unambiguous determined by ECD.

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A central result in the foundations of quantum mechanics is the Kochen-Specker theorem. In short, it states that quantum mechanics cannot be reconciled with classical models that are noncontextual for ideal measurements. The first explicit derivation by Kochen and Specker was rather complex, but considerable simplifications have been achieved thereafter.

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Fifteen constituents, including one new lignan (schisandroside E) and one new terpenoid (schisandenoid A) as well as nine known lignans and four known terpenoids, were isolated from Schisandra chinensis leaves. The structures of schisandroside E and schisandenoid A were established by entirely meticulous spectroscopic analysis (NMR, MS, CD, IR and UV). All compounds were tested for cytotoxicity against MGC-803, Caco-2 and Ishikawa cell lines.

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Eight new sesquiterpenoids named melongenaterpenes M-T (1-8), together with nine known compounds (9-17), were isolated from the 70% ethanol extract of the sepals of Solanum melongena L. The structures of all isolated compounds were elucidated based on 1D and 2D NMR spectra and a comprehensive comparison of their spectroscopic and physical data with values from the published literatures. Meanwhile, the cytotoxicity of all the isolated compounds was evaluated on the three human cancer lines of Hela, Ishikawa and MGC-803 by CCK8 assay, respectively.

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Plants use multiple mechanisms to fight against pathogen infection. One of the major mechanisms involves the disease resistance (R) gene, which specifically mediates plant defense. Recent studies have shown that R genes have broad spectrum effects in response to various stresses.

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