Melatonin Attenuates Noise Stress-induced Gastrointestinal Motility Disorder and Gastric Stress Ulcer: Role of Gastrointestinal Hormones and Oxidative Stress in Rats

( Lei Zhang ),( Ji T Gong ),( Hu Q Zhang ),( Quan H Song ),( Guang H Xu ),( Lei Cai ),( Xiao D Tang ),( Hai F Zhang ),( Fang E Liu ),( Zhan S Jia ),( Hong W Zhang ) 대한소화기기능성질환·운동학회 2015 Journal of Neurogastroenterology and Motility (JNM Vol.21 No.2

Background/Aims There are increasing evidences for gastrointestinal motility disorder (GIMD) and gastric stress ulcer induced by noise stress. The present study was to investigate the reversed effect of melatonin on GIMD and gastric stress ulcer induced by noise stress and potential mechanism. Methods Noise stress was induced on rats, and melatonin (15 mg/kg) was administered to rats by intraperitoneal injection. Differences were assessed in gastric residual rate (GRR), small intestine propulsion rate (SPR), Guth injury score, cortisol, gastrointestinal hormones (calcitonin-gene-related peptide and motilin) and oxidative stress markers (superoxide dismutase and malondialde hyde) in blood plasma as well as gastric mucosa homogenate with or without melatonin. The pathological examination of gastric mucosa was also performed. Results The GRR and SPR were improved by noise stress compared with control (P < 0.05). The pathological examination and Guth injury score revealed gastric stress ulcer. Moreover, the levels of cortisol, motilin and malondialdehyde in blood plasma and malondialdehyde in gastric mucosa homogenate were increased by noise stress (P < 0.05). CGRP and superoxide dismutase activity in both of blood plasma and gastric mucosa homogenate were significantly decreased (P< 0.05). Furthermore, melatonin reversed changes in GRR, SPR, pathological examination, Guth injury score, cortisol, motilin, CGRP, superoxide dismutase activity and malondialdehyde (P < 0.05). Conclusions Melatonin is effective in reversing the GIMD and gastric stress ulcer induced by noise stress. The underlying mechanism may be involved in oxidative stress and gastrointestinal hormones. (J Neurogastroenterol Motil 2015;21:189-199)

MiR-886-5p Inhibition Inhibits Growth and Induces Apoptosis of MCF7 Cells

Zhang, Lei-Lei,Wu, Jiang,Liu, Qiang,Zhang, Yan,Sun, Zhu-Lei,Jing, Hong Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2014 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.15 No.4

Background and Aims: To explore the molecular mechanisms of miR-886-5p in breast cancer., we examined roles in inhibiting growth and migration of MCF-7 cells. Methods: MiR-886-5p mimics and inhibitors were used to express or inhibit MiR-886-5p, respectively, and MTT and clone formation assays were used to determine the survival and proliferation. Hoechst 33342/ PI double staining was applied to detect apoptosis. The expression of caspase-3, caspase-8, caspase-9, MT1-MMP, VEGF-C and VEGF-D was detected by Western blotting, and the levels of MMP2 and MMP9 secreted from MCF-7 cells were assessed by ELISA. MCF-7 cell migration was determined by wound healing and Transwell assays. Results: We found that the growth of MCF-7 cells was inhibited upon decreasing miR-886-5p levels. Inhibiting miR-866-5p also significantly induced apoptosis and decreased the migratory capacity of these cells. The expression of VEGF-C, VEGF-D, MT1-MMP, MMP2, and MMP9 was also found to be decreased as compared to controls. Conclusions: Our data show that downregulation of miR-886-5p expression in MCF-7 cells could significantly inhibit cell growth and migration. This might imply that inhibiting miR-886-5p could be a therapeutic strategy in breast cancer.

A New Unsymmetrical Zinc Phthalocyanine as Photosensitizers for Dye-sensitized Solar Cells

Zhang, Dan,Zhang, Xue-Jun,Zhang, Lei,Mao, Li-Jun Korean Chemical Society 2012 Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society Vol.33 No.4

A new unsymmetrical zinc phthalocyanine has been designed and synthesized based on the 'push-pull' and extended ${\pi}$-conjugation concept for the dye-sensitized solar cells. Three tert-butoxy groups, which act as electron releasing ('push'), enhance the solubility of phthalocyanine in common organic solvents and reduce the aggregation. Hydroxy substituted 9,10-anthraquinones act as electron acceptors ('pull') for the study of photoinduced electron transfer processes as well as grafting onto nanocrystalline $TiO_2$. The new unsymmetrical zinc phthalocyanine was fully characterized by FTIR, UV-vis, $^1H$ NMR, cyclic voltammetry and differential pulse voltammetry. The new sensitizer was tested in dye-sensitized solar cells, and gave a better performance.

A Multi-objective Two-sided Disassembly Line Balancing Optimization Based on Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm: A Case Study of an Automotive Engine

Lei Zhang,Yuanfeng Wu,Xikun Zhao,Shiwen Pan,Ziqi Li,Hong Bao,Yongtin Tian 한국정밀공학회 2022 International Journal of Precision Engineering and Vol.9 No.5

Disassembly is an important part of green manufacturing and remanufacturing. The disassembly line is an optimum form for mass and automatic disassembly in the industry. To optimize the disassembly system and the use of resources, the disassembly line balancing problem (DLBP) has attracted much attention. Compared with the conventional one-sided straight disassembly line, the two-sided disassembly line can use both the left and right sides of a conveyor belt for disassembly operation, thereby improving production efficiency, especially for large-sized and complicated products. On the other hand, due to the constraints and precedence among parts, it is a challenge to plan the disassembly scheme for a two-sided disassembly line. In this paper, a model is established to solve a two-sided disassembly line balancing problem (TDLBP). First, a hybrid graph is utilized to express constraints and precedence relationships, and a novel encoding and decoding method is developed for the disassembly scheme planning of a two-sided line for handling the challenge caused by constraints and precedence among parts. Then, a multi-objective TDLBP optimization model is proposed including the number of matedworkstations, idle time, smoothness index, the auxiliary indicator, and a meta-heuristic based on an artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm is designed to solve TDLBP. Finally, the proposed model and method are applied to an automotive engine case, and the results are compared with NSGA-II, hybrid artificial bee colony algorithm (HABC), and multi-objective flower pollination algorithm (MOFPA) to verify the practicality of the proposed model in solving the TDLBP.

Effect of divalent manganese (Mn 2+ ) concentration on the growth and nitrate nitrogen content of lettuce during aeroponic intercropping with cherry radish

Lei Zhang,Linlin Wang,Faqinwei Li,Fei Xiao,Haiye Yu 한국원예학회 2021 Horticulture, Environment, and Biotechnology Vol.62 No.2

Artemisia princeps (Ganghwa wormwood) is a medicinal plant that produces two major fl avonoids, eupatilin and jaceosidin, which are used in the treatment of gastritis and peptic ulcers. A. princeps is primarily fi eld cultivated, which has some drawbacks, including only one cultivation period per year and variations in fl avonoid production due to environmental changes. The objective of this study was to analyze the eff ects of seasonal light variation and artifi cial light treatments on the growth and fl avonoid production of A. princeps grown in greenhouses for year-round production. The plants were cultivated and harvested nine times in one year under natural seasonal light conditions in greenhouses. During the winter growth period (when natural light is substantially lower), four artifi cial light treatments were applied during two cultivation periods, from September 2016 to January 2017: supplemental light, night interruption, low light, and low light with night interruption. The plants grown under the natural light condition in greenhouses were used as a control. After harvest, the growth of the plants was measured, and the contents of eupatilin and jaceosidin were determined. The plants had the highest biomass when the accumulated radiation and duration were highest. The growth and fl avonoid production were signifi cantly associated with accumulated radiation and light duration. The supplemental light and night interruption treatments resulted in signifi cantly higher biomass and fl avonoid production, with the night interruption treatment requiring less energy input than the supplemental light treatment. Therefore, for consistent biomass and fl avonoid production of A. princeps , a night interruption treatment is suggested in greenhouse cultivation during low irradiation and short days (less than 13 h).

Folate-decorated Polysaccharide-doxorubicin Polymer: Synthesis, Characterization, and Activity in HeLa Cells

Lei Zhang,Lulu Guo,Jingna Ding,Yongming Lu,Yaping Zhang,Yan Chen 대한화학회 2015 Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society Vol.36 No.8

In order to develop the application of the natural polysaccharide lentinan (LNT) and decrease the side effects of doxorubicin, we successfully synthesized a novel folate-modified maleilated lentinan-doxorubicin (FA-M.LNT-DOX) polymer and used it for tumor-targeted drug delivery. The release efficiency and cytotoxicity of the prodrugs were evaluated in vitro. Although DOX release from FA-M.LNT-DOX was quite slow in a neutral buffer, it was particularly fast in an acidic solution with a pH of 5.0. Compared with DOX, FA-M.LNT-DOX showed higher cytotoxicity in HeLa cells and significantly lower cytotoxicity in normal cells. These results suggested that FA-M.LNT-DOX could be considered as a potential drug delivery candidate for folate receptor-positive cancer therapy.

An Visual System for Humanoid Robot Mobile-Manipulation Based on Virtual and Real Video Fusion

Lei Wang,Lei Zhang,Junyan Yi,Xiaoyan Wen,Chuncheng Liao 보안공학연구지원센터 2015 International Journal of Signal Processing, Image Vol.8 No.5

A visual system based on virtual and real video for the humanoid robot manipulation is presented. 3D virtual model of humanoid robot is established. It has the same aspect and freedom setup as the real robot. Multiple feedback from the robot are fused and used to express the real robot status as text and images. The system also forecasts the operation order and displays the simulation result. In the data fusion module, a least-squares algorithm is adopted to calculate the real-time position and attitude of the robot. Experiments demonstrate that the system can offer good telepresence and a preview of the operation order. In this paper, we also propose an adaptive Elastic Net method for edge linking of images from the robot cameras to understand the situation of the task. In the proposed method, an adaptive dynamic parameter strategy and a stochastic noise strategy are introduced into the Elastic Net, which enables the network to have superior ability for escaping from local minima and converge sooner to optimal or near-optimal solutions

Brain atlas fusion from high-thickness diagnostic magnetic resonance images by learning-based super-resolution

Zhang, Jinpeng,Zhang, Lichi,Xiang, Lei,Shao, Yeqin,Wu, Guorong,Zhou, Xiaodong,Shen, Dinggang,Wang, Qian Elsevier 2017 Pattern recognition Vol.63 No.-

<P><B>Abstract</B></P> <P>It is fundamentally important to fuse the brain atlas from magnetic resonance (MR) images for many imaging-based studies. Most existing works focus on fusing the atlases from high-quality MR images. However, for low-quality diagnostic images (i.e., with high inter-slice thickness), the problem of atlas fusion has not been addressed yet. In this paper, we intend to fuse the brain atlas from the high-thickness diagnostic MR images that are prevalent for clinical routines. The main idea of our works is to extend the conventional groupwise registration by incorporating a novel super-resolution strategy. The contribution of the proposed super-resolution framework is two-fold. First, each high-thickness subject image is reconstructed to be isotropic by the patch-based sparsity learning. Then, the reconstructed isotropic image is enhanced for better quality through the random-forest-based regression model. In this way, the images obtained by the super-resolution strategy can be fused together by applying the groupwise registration method to construct the required atlas. Our experiments have shown that the proposed framework can effectively solve the problem of atlas fusion from the low-quality brain MR images.</P> <P><B>Highlights</B></P> <P> <UL> <LI> We fuse the brain atlas from real diagnostic MR images with high inter-slice thickness. </LI> <LI> All images are processed through the two-stage learning-based super-resolution. </LI> <LI> Groupwise registration is applied for unbiased atlas fusion. </LI> </UL> </P>

Adaptive Truncation technique for Constrained Multi-Objective Optimization

( Lei Zhang ),( Xiaojun Bi ),( Yanjiao Wang ) 한국인터넷정보학회 2019 KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Syst Vol.13 No.11

The performance of evolutionary algorithms can be seriously weakened when constraints limit the feasible region of the search space. In this paper we present a constrained multi-objective optimization algorithm based on adaptive ε-truncation (ε-T-CMOA) to further improve distribution and convergence of the obtained solutions. First of all, as a novel constraint handling technique, ε-truncation technique keeps an effective balance between feasible solutions and infeasible solutions by permitting some excellent infeasible solutions with good objective value and low constraint violation to take part in the evolution, so diversity is improved, and convergence is also coordinated. Next, an exponential variation is introduced after differential mutation and crossover to boost the local exploitation ability. At last, the improved crowding density method only selects some Pareto solutions and near solutions to join in calculation, thus it can evaluate the distribution more accurately. The comparative results with other state-of-the-art algorithms show that ε-T-CMOA is more diverse than the other algorithms and it gains better in terms of convergence in some extent.

High precision Automatic Voltage Regulator by using series transformer

Zhang Lei(장뢰),Hwa-Chun Lee(이화춘),Tae-Uk Jung(정태욱),Hae-Kon Nam(남해곤),Soon-Ryul Nam(남순열),Sung-Jun Park(박성준) 전력전자학회 2008 전력전자학술대회 논문집 Vol.- No.-

Now there are two types Non-contact compensation AC automatic voltage regulator (A.V.R). One is transformer compensation regulator, whose principle is the combination of multiple compensation transformers, do the compensation by turning on and off the connections of the transformer through the multi-full bridge circuit. This method removed the mechanical drive and contacts, which increases the life and the dynamic performance of the A.V.R. However, the compensation is multilevel, and it needs many compensation transformers and switches, the circuit is complex, the compensation precision is low. Another type is PWM switch AC regulator, whose principle is getting the AC voltage from the input, then induce the AC compensation voltage through commutating and high frequency PWM transforming, and phase tracking. Here the compensation is step-less, the compensation precision is high, and the response is fast. But the circuit is complex, and it needs an inverse compensation transformer, which is difficult to realize high-power applications. In this paper, it shows an Automatic Voltage Regulator which use high frequency PWM inverter do compensation. This A.V.R has the function as the custom-power, which make the performance of the power supply in a high level.