(
) formula granules and preparations have been used as a popular traditional Chinese medicine for clinical treatment since they have good pharmacological activity to treat nervous system diseases. ...Gastrodin and parishins have been the main active components in aqueous extracts for
formula granules, but their pharmacological activities and metabolism are different. For quality control of the extracts, the extraction conditions should be investigated to accurately control the contents of two kinds of components. In this paper, the transfer rate of six index components (including gastrodin,
-hydroxybenzyl alcohol, parishin A, parishin B, parishin C, and parishin E) obtained by HPLC were used as indicators to investigate the effect of pH on the
extraction process. The results demonstrated that pH is a key factor for preventing transforming parishins into gastrodin and maintaining high content of parishins in the extracts. It can be concluded that the weak acid environment could improve the transfer rate of parishins, thus ensuring the gastrodin and parishins consistency between
raw materials and its aqueous extracts. Therefore, pH is an essential condition for accurate quality control of the extracts.
Reflective displays have stimulated considerable interest because of their friendly readability and low energy consumption. Herein, we develop a reflective display technique via an ...electro-microfluidic assembly of particles (eMAP) strategy whereby colored particles assemble into annular and planar structures inside a dyed water droplet to create "open" and "closed" states of a display pixel. Water-in-oil droplets are compressed within microwells to form a pixel array. The particles dispersed in droplets are driven by deformation-strengthened dielectrophoretic force to achieve fast and reversible motion and assemble into multiple structures. This eMAP based device can display designed information in three primary colors with ≥170° viewing angle, ~0.14 s switching time, and bistability with an optimized material system. This proposed technique demonstrates the basis of a high-performance and energy-saving reflective display, and the display speed and color quality could be further improved by structure and material optimization; exhibiting a potential reflective display technology.
Venture capital investment has serious conflicts of interest and information asymmetry. Venture capitalists often make investment decisions on the basis of the passion of entrepreneurs, including ...enthusiasm and preparedness, in the process of interacting with them. Most of the previous research on relational capital have focused on the cooperative relationship between suppliers and buyers. However, the role of relational capital in the process of partnership between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs has not been revealed. On the basis of signaling theory, we explore the relationship between entrepreneurial passion and venture capitalists’ willingness to invest. We also examine the mediating and moderating roles of relational capital. This study takes 79 projects between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs as samples for empirical analysis to verify our hypothesis. Results show that entrepreneurs’ enthusiasm and preparedness have a significant positive impact on venture capitalists’ willingness to invest. Relational capital plays a mediating role between entrepreneurial passion and venture capitalists’ willingness to invest. Relational capital positively moderates the relationship between preparedness and venture capitalists’ willingness to invest but has no moderating effect between enthusiasm and venture capitalists’ willingness to invest. Results deepen the understanding of the relationship between entrepreneurs’ passion and venture capitalists’ willingness to invest, which has guiding significance for venture capital practice in China.
The effectiveness of trust has been extensively investigated in entrepreneurship studies. However, compared to the outcomes of trust, we still lack knowledge about the mechanisms underlying venture ...capitalists' initial trust in entrepreneurs. Drawing from signal theory and impression management theory, this study explores an impression management motivational explanation for the influencing factors of venture capitalists' initial trust. An empirical test is based on 202 valid questionnaires from venture capitalists, and the results indicate that the signal of five dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation has a significant impact on the initial trust of venture capitalists and that a signal of entrepreneurial orientation of perseverance or passion positively influences venture capitalists' initial trust through acquired impression management strategies, while a signal of entrepreneurial orientation of risk-taking, innovation, or proactivity positively affects the initial trust of venture capitalists through defensive impression management strategies. The perceptions of entrepreneurs' hypocrisy by venture capitalists negatively moderate the relationship between acquired impression management strategies and the initial trust of venture capitalists and negatively moderate the relationship between defensive impression management strategies and the initial trust of venture capitalists.
In this work, we report on an integrated digital microfluidic system for precise sensing and automatic actuating droplets (ISPSAA) based on electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD). A feedback controller ...in the system is capable of locating, judging and controlling individual droplet independent of liquid composition. An integrated position sensor is capable of tracking the continuous displacement of a droplet between electrodes through the feedback of capacitance difference in real time, and thus improves the droplet control precision. Real-time droplet allocation and actuation have been achieved in a digital and precise way by combining the droplet sensing and driving functions. A defect electrode on the droplet transportation path can also be sensed and avoided in an intelligent way by adjusting corresponding electrodes and parameters to actuate the droplet to reach destination position based on the designed route with minimum number of actuated electrodes. Because of its portability, low cost, and adaptive functions, ISPSAA are helpful for further understanding and implementation of digital microfluidic systems for practical applications.
Complement factor H (CFH) has been found to be associated with insulin resistance. This study assessed the correlation between CFH and other clinical parameters, and determined whether CFH played a ...role in gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and adverse pregnancy outcomes.
A total of 397 pregnant women were included for analysis in this nested case-control study. Clinical parameters and serum were collected within the 11-17th gestational age at the first prenatal visit. At 24-28 weeks of gestation, a 75 g oral glucose tolerance test was performed and subjects were divided into a GDM (n = 80) and a non-GDM control group (n = 317). The delivery data were also followed. The serum CFH level was assayed by ELISA.
CFH was higher in GDM than in non-GDM controls (280.02 58.60 vs. 264.20 68.77; P = 0.014). CFH level was moderately associated with pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), BMI and total triglycerides (TG), and slightly associated with gestational age, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), total cholesterol (TC) in GDM and non-GDM (all P < 0.05). Moreover, CFH level was moderately correlated with alkaline phosphatase (ALP) and slightly correlated with age, uric acid (UA) and total bilirubin (TB) in non-GDM (all P < 0.05). After adjustment for clinical confounding factors, BMI, TG, gestational age, ALP, TB, age and UA were independent risk factors for log
CFH levels (all P < 0.05) in all subjects. In addition, overweight or obese pregnant women, women with hypertriglyceridemia and women in the second trimester had significantly higher CFH levels than normal weight and underweight group (P < 0.001), the non-hypertriglyceridemia group (P < 0.001) and women in the first trimester group (P < 0.05) in all pregnant women respectively. Following binary logistic regression, CFH was not independently associated with GDM and related pregnant outcomes.
The CFH in 11-17th weeks of gestation might be affected by many factors, including BMI, TG, gestational age, ALP, TB, age and UA. CFH was not an independent risk factor for GDM and avderse pregnancy outcomes.
Non-invasive reconstruction of electrophysiological activity in the heart is of great significance for clinical disease prevention and surgical treatment. The distribution of transmembrane potential ...(TMP) in three-dimensional myocardium can help us diagnose heart diseases such as myocardial ischemia and ectopic pacing. However, the problem of solving TMP is ill-posed, and appropriate constraints need to be added. The existing state-of-art method total variation minimisation only takes advantage of the local similarity in space, which has the problem of over-smoothing, and fails to take into account the relationship among frames in the dynamic TMP sequence. In this work, the authors introduce a novel regularisation method called graph-based total variation to make up for the above shortcomings. The graph structure takes the TMP value of a time sequence on each heart node as the criterion to establish the similarity relationship among the heart. Two sets of phantom experiments were set to verify the superiority of the proposed method over the traditional constraints: infarct scar reconstruction and activation wavefront reconstruction. In addition, experiments with ten real premature ventricular contractions patient data were used to demonstrate the accuracy of the authors’ method in clinical applications.
•Ceria exhibited significantly different structure characteristics and adsorption performance.•Synthesized ceria was used to selectively adsorb curcuminoids from the extracts of turmeric, while ...turmerones were not adsorbed.•It is a simple separation and purification method for curcuminoids with low solvent consumption and good selectivity.
In order to better develop and utilize curcuminoids, a method with high selectivity and simple and rapid separation and enrichment of curcuminoids from turmeric should be established. In this study, hydrated ceria and ceria were first prepared, and then curcumin was used as a model compound to investigate the adsorption and separation performance of the obtained adsorbed materials. Finally, ceria obtained at the calcination temperature of 400 °C were selected as the best adsorbent, and the curcuminoids in turmeric were effectively separated and enriched. This method not only has mild synthetic conditions and simple methods for adsorption materials, but also has low organic solvent consumption, simple operation and good selectivity in the separation and enrichment process, which provides a good enrichment method and research basis for the further study of curcuminoids.
•The effect of microplastics on the chlorophyll a content of algae was studied.•The changes of photosynthetic activity were determined.•High concentrations of microplastics inhibited photosynthesis ...of algae.•Toxicity of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is greater than that of polypropylene (PP).
Microplastics are widely distributed in freshwater environments. At present, most of the studies on the toxicity of microplastics are concentrated on aquatic feeding animals, but relatively few have addressed freshwater algae. This study investigated the effect of microplastics (polypropylene (PP) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC)) exposure on the photosynthetic system of freshwater algae over the logarithmic growth period. The results showed that both PVC and PP had a negative effect on chlorophyll a concentrations of Chlorella (C.) pyrenoidosa and Microcystis (M.) flos-aquae; among them, when the concentration of PVC exceeded 250 mg/L, compared with the control group, the chlorophyll a content of C. pyrenoidosa was reduced by 55.23%. For photosynthetic activity, higher concentrations of PVC and PP can induce lower values of Fv/Fm, Fv/F0, and Fv’/Fm’, suggesting a larger impact in algae. However, algae were able to adjust, with increased values of Fv/Fm, Fv/F0, and Fv’/Fm’. This dose-negative effect phenomenon also exists in the study of the rapid light-response curves. In addition, comparing the two microplastics, we could see that PVC greatly inhibits the photosynthesis system of freshwater algae. Our study confirmed that microplastics can affect algae growth under certain concentrations, which provides evidence for understanding the risks of microplastics.
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