Inhibitory Effect of Homochlorcyclizine on Melanogenesis in α-Melanocyte Stimulating Hormone-stimulated Mouse B16 Melanoma Cells

Te-Sheng Chang,Chin-Tsun Chen 대한약학회 2012 Archives of Pharmacal Research Vol.35 No.1

The histamine receptor H1 antagonist homochlorcyclizine (HC) has been widely used as an antihistamine agent for the treatment of allergies. However, the effect of HC on skin pigmentation is not known. In the present study, we investigated the inhibitory effect of HC on melanogenesis in mouse B16 melanoma cells. Our results showed that HC inhibited melanogenesis in either α-melanocyte stimulating hormone (α-MSH)- or 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthin (IBMX)-stimulated B16 cells in a dose-dependent manner. Despite the strong inhibition of melanogenesis by HC, it was surprisingly found that HC did not reduce either cellular or melanosomal tyrosinase activity in α-MSH-stimulated B16 cells. In addition, HC also did not directly inhibit either murine or mushroom tyrosinase activity in the cell-free system. Moreover, western blotting and reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analyses respectively confirmed that HC did not downregulate levels of tyrosinase protein and its mRNA in α-MSH-stimulated B16 cells. These results clearly demonstrated that HC inhibits melanogenesis of B16 cells by a mechanism other than reduction of the cellular tyrosinase activity. From the present study, HC was proven to be a good candidate as a skin-whitening agent for treatment of skin hyperpigmentation, and this generic drug might be suitable for use in combination with other depigmenting agents due to its unique inhibition mechanism.

Assessing Pesticide Effects on Honeybee Movement Behavior using an In-hive Imaging System

( Kung-chin Wu ),( Jun-jee Chao ),( Thi Nha Ngo ),( En-cheng Yang ),( Ta-te Lin ) 한국농업기계학회 2018 한국농업기계학회 학술발표논문집 Vol.23 No.1

Food and cash crops in the world naturally depend on honeybees for delivering pollen. In recent years, the occurrence of the honeybee colony collapse disorder (CCD) caused a large number of honeybee populations to disappear. This phenomenon is causing a significant impact on agricultural production. Therefore, this study aims to monitor the behavior of honeybees and establish effective analysis tools to understand the causes of CCD. Honeybee interaction behavior inside the beehives offers important behavioral information. In order to analyze honeybee behavior, each individual honeybee was affixed with waterproof text labels for observation. Using image processing techniques, such as label recognition and tracking, the movement of the honeybee inside the hive are recorded. By using label tags, the honeybee can be labeled by groups, and the trajectories can be used to classify them into different groups. After obtaining the honeybee trajectories, the states and transformation conditions were determined and used to create a finite state machine (FSM) model. The FSM model was used to analyze the trajectories of the honeybee: it was divided into multiple secondary trajectories by different conditions and state transitions. The model could also be used to transform the trajectories into patterns of behavior and were combined into a sequence of behavioral patterns. Using the data obtained, it was found that in-hive and foraging bees have different trajectory and behavioral patterns. It was also found that the behavioral pattern sequences and trajectories can be used to train models using machine learning and deep learning techniques to classify and recognize different groups of honeybees. Experiments were performed using the imaging system to record and analyze long-term observation of honeybee movement behavior after treatment with pesticide in contaminated food. We further demonstrated this technique in assessing the effect of pesticide on the change of movement behaviors of honeybees.

Alpinate Oxyphyllae Fructus Inhibits IGFII-Related Signaling Pathway to Attenuate Ang II-Induced Pathological Hypertrophy in H9c2 Cardiomyoblasts

Chuan-Te Tsai,Yung-Ming Chang,Shu-Luan Lin,Yueh-Sheng Chen,Yu-Lan Yeh,Viswanadha Vijaya Padma,Chin-Chuan Tsai,Ray-Jade Chen,Tsung-Jung Ho,Chih-Yang Huang 한국식품영양과학회 2016 Journal of medicinal food Vol.19 No.3

Angiotensin II (Ang II) is a very important cardiovascular disease inducer and may cause cardiac pathological hypertrophy and remodeling. We evaluated a Chinese traditional medicine, alpinate oxyphyllae fructus (AOF), for therapeutic efficacy for treating Ang II-induced cardiac hypertrophy. AOF has been used to treat patients with various symptoms accompanying hypertension and cerebrovascular disorders in Korea. We investigated its protective effect against Ang II-induced cytoskeletal change and hypertrophy in H9c2 cells. The results showed that treating cells with Ang II resulted in pathological hypertrophy, such as increased expression of transcription factors NFAT-3/p-NFAT-3, hypertrophic response genes (atrial natriuretic peptide [ANP] and b-type natriuretic peptide [BNP]), and Gαq down-stream effectors (PLCβ3 and calcineurin). Pretreatment with AOF (60–100 μg/mL) led to significantly reduced hypertrophy. We also found that AOF pretreatment significantly suppressed the cardiac remodeling proteins, metalloproteinase (MMP9 and MMP2), and plasminogen activator, induced by Ang II challenge. In conclusion, we provide evidence that AOF protects against Ang II-induced pathological hypertrophy by specifically inhibiting the insulin-like growth factor (IGF) II/IIR-related signaling pathway in H9c2 cells. AOF might be a candidate for cardiac hypertrophy and ventricular remodeling prevention in chronic cardiovascular diseases.

A Novel Character Segmentation Method for Text Images Captured by Cameras

Hsin-Te Lue,Kuo-Chin Fan,Chih-Wei Lin,Ming-Gang Wen,Chih-Chang Yu 한국전자통신연구원 2010 ETRI Journal Vol.32 No.5

Due to the rapid development of mobile devices equipped with cameras, instant translation of any text seen in any context is possible. Mobile devices can serve as a translation tool by recognizing the texts presented in the captured scenes. Images captured by cameras will embed more external or unwanted effects which need not to be considered in traditional optical character recognition (OCR). In this paper, we segment a text image captured by mobile devices into individual single characters to facilitate OCR kernel processing. Before proceeding with character segmentation, text detection and text line construction need to be performed in advance. A novel character segmentation method which integrates touched character filters is employed on text images captured by cameras. In addition, periphery features are extracted from the segmented images of touched characters and fed as inputs to support vector machines to calculate the confident values. In our experiment, the accuracy rate of the proposed character segmentation system is 94.90%, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Separation Technology, Thermodynamics : Plasma modification on a Nafion membrane for direct methanol fuel cell applications

( Shingjiang Jessie Lue ),( Te Shun Shih ),( Ta Chin Wei ) 한국화학공학회 2006 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.23 No.3

Catheter Ablation of Peri-Conduit Ventricular Tachycardia in a Patient with Rastelli Procedure for Double Outlet Right Ventricle with Malposition of Great Arteries

Abigail Louise D. Te,Fa-Po Chung,Chin-Yu Lin,Atul Prabhu,Pi-Chang Lee,Shih-Ann Chen 대한심장학회 2017 Korean Circulation Journal Vol.47 No.4

Assessment of Pesticide Effect on Honey Bees Behavior using a Real-time Imaging System

( Thi Nha Ngo ),( Kung-chin Wu ),( En-cheng Yang ),( Ta-te Lin ) 한국농업기계학회 2018 한국농업기계학회 학술발표논문집 Vol.23 No.1

Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are ecologically and economically important insects. However, massive deaths of honey bees have been reported all around the world. There is much evidence linking the decline of their population to pesticides. However, the impact of lethal doses of pesticide on honey bees is still under debate. Monitoring honey bees passing frequencies at hive entrance is an efficient method to verify the health condition of a beehive. In this study, a real-time imaging system based on a GPU processor for automatic tracking of in-and-out frequencies is presented. The imaging system includes: (1) a dark acrylic box with a transparent pathway. This restricts bees to pass into the image capturing area, (2) an LED light source, (3) a webcam, and (4) an embedded system with GPUs (NVIDIA Jetson TX2) for real-time image acquisition and processing. Background subtraction is applied to remove unnecessary objects from the video. In order to track the in-and-out frequencies of multiple honey bees, and integrated Kalman Filter (KF) and Hungarian algorithm is implemented. KF is used to estimate the object position on each frame. Meanwhile, the Hungarian algorithm is used for the detection of multiple honey bees. Based on the honey bees’ trajectories, a counting algorithm is used to determine their in-and-out activities. The detection algorithms and real-time automatic tracking accuracy rates were evaluated and the system performance was tested with field experiments. The imaging system was further applied to assess the effect of pesticides on honey bee colonies. Five healthy honey bee colonies were treated with different levels of pesticide concentration in contaminated food. The experimental results, which demonstrate the feasibility of our monitoring and tracking system to determine honey bee frequencies, are useful for assessing the pesticide effect on honey bee colonies.

Unusual Exchange Bias Effects Induced in NiFe/Mn Thin Films via Ion-beam Bombardment: Superlattice vs. Nanocomposite

Chi-Hsin Liu,Chin Shueh,Tien-Chi Lan,Ko-Wei Lin,Wen-Chen Chen,Te-Ho Wu,R. D. Desautels,J. van Lierop 한국물리학회 2013 THE JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN PHYSICAL SOCIETY Vol.62 No.12

The interplay between interlayer coupling and exchange bias coupling in [NiFe/Mn] multilayerbasedthin films was investigated by using ion-beam bombardment during deposition to control theconfigurations from superlattice to nanocomposite or hybrid-structured thin films. Results showedthat well-defined interfaces in the superlattice [NiFe/Mn] thin film exhibited an interlayer couplingbehavior. In contrast, an enhanced coercivity was observed in the nanocomposite [NiFe-Mn] thinfilm. However, the hybrid [NiFe-Mn]/[NiFe/Mn] thin film with an intermixed NiFeMn alloyed filmcomponent gave rise to unusual positive exchange bias coupling.

Characteristics and heterostructure of metal-doped TiO2/ZnO nanocatalysts

Chen Wu-Jhang,Hsu Kuo-Chin,Fang Te-Hua,Chen Tao-Hsing,Li Ming-Hao 한국물리학회 2022 Current Applied Physics Vol.38 No.-

In this study, Ag or Al-doped TiO2/ZnO heterostructure nanocatalysts were prepared using a sol-gel method for photocatalysis to evaluate the degradability. The photocatalytic behavior was evaluated by the degradation of methylene blue (MB) under ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation. Photocatalytic studies suggested that 1 mol% Agdoped TiO2/ZnO (TiO2/ZnO = 0.75/0.25) heterostructure nanocatalysts showed higher photocatalytic activity, and that the degradation efficiency can reach 83% in 4 h, 14% higher than that for pure TiO2. Finally, the photocatalysis mechanism for the Ag-doped TiO2/ZnO heterostructure nanocatalysts is discussed.

Transesterification of soybean oil to biodiesel by tin-based Brønsted-Lewis acidic ionic liquid catalysts

Xiaoxiang Han,Shang-Bin Liu,Wei Yan,Chin-Te Hung,Yanfei He,Pei-Hao Wu,Li-Li Liu,Shing-Jong Huang 한국화학공학회 2016 Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering Vol.33 No.7

A series of Brønsted-Lewis acidic ionic liquid (BLAIL) catalysts consisting of sulfonated ionic liquid [SO3H-pmim]Cl and Sn(II) chloride have been synthesized and exploited for catalytic transesterification of soybean oil with methanol to biodiesel. The structural and chemical properties of these [SO3H-pmim]Cl-xSnCl2 (x=0-0.8) catalysts were characterized by different analytical and spectroscopic techniques, such as FT-IR, TGA, and NMR. In particular, their acid properties were studied by solid-state 31P NMR using trimethylphosphine oxide as the probe molecule. The BLAIL catalysts were found highly efficient for transesterification reaction due to the introduction of Lewis acidity by SnCl2 in the initially Brønsted acidic [SO3H-pmim]Cl catalyst. The effects of three independent process variables on biodiesel yield were optimized by response surface methodology (RSM). Consequently, an excellent biodiesel yield of 98.6% was achieved under optimized reaction conditions over the BLAIL catalyst with SnCl2 loading (x) of 0.7.