Publications

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is acccounting for over 50% of all cases of dementia worldwide. Currently there are no effective treatments available for AD. Plant-based medications and dietary interventions have attracted increasing research interest as an alternative strategy for the protection and treatment of AD. Thereby, this review aims to summarize different medical interventions with dietary materials such as edible medicinal plants and ways to capitalize on the therapeutic advantages of their components to provide an alternative approach to enhance their long-term pleiotropic benefits in AD. Given the established mechanisms in AD pathogenesis, we elucidate different pathophysiological changes associated with lowering the disease incidence with these mainly plant-based dietary materials, providing laboratory evidence on the feasibility and potential of dietary intervention in the prevention and treatment of AD. In particular, we highly recommend the concept of dietary intervention as an alternative or supplementary therapeutic strategy.

Core-shell CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) dispersed in a droplet of organic solvent have been applied for the first time as luminescent probes for the selective detection of volatile species. Luminescence quenching caused by volatile species was examined after their trapping onto a drop using the headspace single-drop microextraction (HS-SDME) approach along with microvolume fluorospectrometry. The novel method is characterized by low reagent and sample consumption, especially regarding QDs, a reduction about 500-fold for each analysis being attained in comparison with luminescent probing in aqueous phase using conventional luminescence spectrometers with 1 cm quartz cells for measurement. To assess QDs as luminescent probes along with HS-SDME, 14 volatile species were tried. Strong luminescence quenching (i.e., I(0)/I > 2.5) was observed for species such as CH(3)Hg(+) and Se(IV) after hydridation with NaBH(4). Moderate luminescent quenching (I(0)/I ≈ 2) was observed for species such as Hg(II) after its conversion into Hg(0), H(2)S, and methylcyclopentadienyl-manganese tricarbonyl (MMT). Small luminescence quenching effects (i.e., 1< I(0)/I <2) were caused by other hydride forming species such as As(III), Sb(III), Te(IV), and Bi(III), as well as SnBu(4), volatile amines, and endosulfan. Detection limits of 6.3 × 10(-9) and 1.6 × 10(-7) M were obtained for Se(IV) and CH(3)Hg(+), respectively. Repeatability expressed as relative standard deviation (N = 7) was about 5%. QD-HS-SDME-μvolume-fluorospectrometry allows one to carry out matrix separation, preconcentration, and confinement of QDs, hence achieving a selective, sensitive, fast, environmentally friendly, and miniaturized luminescence assay.

Abstract Fecundity is usually considered as a trait closely connected to fitness and is expected to exhibit substantial nonadditive genetic variation and inbreeding depression. However, two independent experiments, using populations of different geographical origin, indicate that early fecundity in Drosophila melanogaster behaves as a typical additive trait of low heritability. The first experiment involved artificial selection in inbred and non-inbred lines, all of them started from a common base population previously maintained in the laboratory for about 35 generations. The realized heritability estimate was 0.151 ± 0.075 and the inbreeding depression was very small and nonsignificant (0.09 ± 0.09% of the non-inbred mean per 1% increase in inbreeding coefficient). With inbreeding, the observed decrease in the within-line additive genetic variance and the corresponding increase of the between-line variance were very close to their expected values for pure additive gene action. This result is at odds with previous studies showing inbreeding depression and, therefore, directional dominance for the same trait and species. All experiments, however, used laboratory populations, and it is possible that the original genetic architecture of the trait in nature was subsequently altered by the joint action of random drift and adaptation to captivity. Thus, we carried out a second experiment, involving inbreeding without artificial selection in a population recently collected from the wild. In this case we obtained, again, a maximum-likelihood heritability estimate of 0.210 ± 0.027 and very little nonsignificant inbreeding depression (0.06 ± 0.12%). The results suggest that, for fitness-component traits, low levels of additive genetic variance are not necessarily associated with large inbreeding depression or high levels of nonadditive genetic variance.

In wearable biomedical signal detection, the low-power consumption is a critical requirement. However, the process of biomedical signal detection with traditional neural-network processor is uneconomical for large data movements. A typical solution is the near memory computing (NMC) method, locating more data near the computing engine to save energy, where the detecting accuracy and power consumption is difficult to be optimized simultaneously. In addition, a suitable computing engine is needed to match both power and computation budget. In this work, we combine the NMC-based ECG processor equipped with a high-precision time-domain engine to perform the detection of arrhythmia, namely TDPRO. The proposed TDPRO supports high precision multiplication and addition operation with 8-bit input and weight parameters. Also, we propose TD-zero-jumping and idle-shutdown technique to further reduce 63%$\sim$ 91% power consumption of the time-domain engine. The error rate of 8-bit MAC operation in the TDPRO is 1.18%, which is suitable for the ECG detection.

Abstract Rhodiola species, belonging to the family Crassulaceae, have long been used as an adaptogen, tonic, antidepressant, and antistress medicine or functional food in Asia and Europe. Due to the valuable application, the growing demand of Rhodiola species has led to a rapid decrease in resource content. This review aims to summarize the integrated research progress of seven mainstream Rhodiola species. We first outline both traditional and current use of Rhodiola for the treatment of various diseases. A detailed summary and comparison of chemical, pharmacological, toxicological, and clinical studies of various Rhodiola species highlight recent scientific advances and gaps, which gives insights into the understanding of Rhodiola application and would be helpful to improve the situation of biological resources and diversities of Rhodiola plants.