Metabolic profiles of dioscin in rats revealed by ultra‐performance liquid chromatography quadrupole time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry

Dioscin (DIS), one of the most abundant bioactive steroidal saponins in Dioscorea sp., is used as a complementary medicine to treat coronary disease and angina pectoris in China. Although the pharmacological activities and pharmacokinetics of DIS have been well demonstrated, information regarding the final metabolic fates is very limited. This study investigated the in vivo metabolic profiles of DIS after oral administration by ultra‐performance liquid chromatography quadrupole time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry method. The structures of the metabolites were identified and tentatively characterized by means of comparing the molecular mass, retention time and fragmentation pattern of the analytes with those of the parent compound. A total of eight metabolites, including seven phase I and one phase II metabolites, were detected and tentatively identified for the first time. Oxidation, deglycosylation and glucuronidation were found to be the major metabolic processes of the compound in rats. In addition, a possible metabolic pathway on the biotransformation of DIS in vivo was proposed. This study provides valuable and new information on the metabolism of DIS, which will be helpful for further understanding its mechanism of action. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Real-time phase measurement and correction of dynamic multimode beam using a single spatial light modulator

In this Letter,a novel system for adaptively correcting the phase of a dynamic multimode beam is proposed.While using merely one spatial light modulator,the phase measurement of the first-order diffraction pattern and the correction of the zeroth diffraction order are simultaneously realized.The real-time experimental result is obtained at a control rate of 10 Hz.The power-in-the-bucket value is improved from 38.5%to 61.8%,even with fundamental mode content that is consistently below 30%.To the best of our knowledge,this is the first implementation of real-time adaptive correction of the entire multimode beam.     

不同声音偏好的游客声景观主观评价差异——以丽江大研古镇为例*

古镇作为集自然景观与人文景观一体的景区，具有丰富的声音类型。本研究以大研古镇为例，通过实地调研探究不同声音偏好的游客对古镇声景观的主观评价差异。基于游客的声音偏好，将游客分为偏爱自然声和偏爱人工声两大类。通过因子分析提取游客声景观主观评价的5个主因子：大小、音质、效价、偏好和唤醒。进一步分析发现，这5个因子具有一定的层级性，其中从大小到唤醒代表声景观评价从声音的物理属性向声音的联想评价逐级提升。其中在低层级评价(大小、音质)中，偏好自然声的游客和偏好人工声的游客无显著差异，低层级评价具有稳定性；而在高层级评价(效价、偏好和唤醒)中，偏好人工声的游客更关注古镇声景观的淳朴性和遗产性。因此，游客对声景观的主观评价可视为一种指标，判断景区声景所处的评价阶段，从而为景区声景观改善提供更有针对性的建议。     

浮升力和流动加速对超临界CO2管内流动传热影响

基于单相流体的概念,超临界流体的异常传热行为已经被研究很多年了,但是关于其流动传热机理仍没有统一的认识.本文通过理论分析和实验研究了超临界二氧化碳在竖直管内向上流动过程中,浮升力和流动加速效应对其流动结构和传热过程的影响.结果表明,没有确凿的实验证据表明超临界流体的异常传热行为是浮升力和流动加速直接导致的,存在的估计浮升力和流动加速效应准则均是在常物性流体的基础上,做了大量假设得出的,不同的研究者采用浮升力和流动加速准则分析超临界流体的传热恶化得出的结论不一致.最后,基于拟沸腾理论分析超临界流体的传热恶化过程,提出超临界沸腾数区分了超临界流体正常传热与恶化传热的转换边界,为超临界流体流动传热研究提供新思路,超临界沸腾数对建立用于不同技术的超临界流体动力循环的最佳运行条件具有重要意义.     

Crosslinked poly(ethylene oxide) containing siloxanes fabricated through thiol‐ene photochemistry

Homogenous amphiphilic crosslinked polymer films comprising of poly(ethylene oxide) and polysiloxane were synthesized utilizing thiol‐ene “ click ” photochemistry. A systematic variation in polymer composition was Carried out to obtain high quality films with varied amount of siloxane and poly(ethylene oxide). These films showed improved gas separation performance with high gas permeabilities with good CO₂/N₂ selectivity. Furthermore, the resulting films were also tested for its biocompatibility, as a carrier media which allow human adult mesenchymal stem cells to retain their capacity for osteoblastic differentiation after transplantation. The obtained crosslinked films were characterized using differential scanning calorimetry, dynamic mechanical analysis, thermogravimetric analysis, FTIR, Raman‐IR , and small angle X‐ray scattering. The synthesis ease and commercial availability of the starting materials suggests that these new crosslinked polymer networks could find applications in wide range of applications. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2015 , 53, 1548–1557     

A Photoactivated Cu–CeO2 Catalyst with Cu-[O]-Ce Active Species Designed through MOF Crystal Engineering

Fully utilizing solar energy for catalysis requires the integration of conversion mechanisms and therefore delicate design of catalyst structures and active species. Herein, a MOF crystal engineering method was developed to controllably synthesize a copper–ceria catalyst with well-dispersed photoactive Cu-[O]-Ce species. Using the preferential oxidation of CO as a model reaction, the catalyst showed remarkably efficient and stable photoactivated catalysis, which found practical application in feed gas treatment for fuel cell gas supply. The coexistence of photochemistry and thermochemistry effects contributes to the high efficiency. Our results demonstrate a catalyst design approach with atomic or molecular precision and a combinatorial photoactivation strategy for solar energy conversion.     

An Improved Composite Multiscale Fuzzy Entropy for Feature Extraction of MI-EEG

Motor Imagery Electroencephalography (MI-EEG) has shown good prospects in neurorehabilitation, and the entropy-based nonlinear dynamic methods have been successfully applied to feature extraction of MI-EEG. Especially based on Multiscale Fuzzy Entropy (MFE), the fuzzy entropies of the τ coarse-grained sequences in τ scale are calculated and averaged to develop the Composite MFE (CMFE) with more feature information. However, the coarse-grained process fails to match the nonstationary characteristic of MI-EEG by a mean filtering algorithm. In this paper, CMFE is improved by assigning the different weight factors to the different sample points in the coarse-grained process, i.e., using the weighted mean filters instead of the original mean filters, which is conductive to signal filtering and feature extraction, and the resulting personalized Weighted CMFE (WCMFE) is more suitable to represent the nonstationary MI-EEG for different subjects. All the WCMFEs of multi-channel MI-EEG are fused in serial to construct the feature vector, which is evaluated by a back-propagation neural network. Based on a public dataset, extensive experiments are conducted, yielding a relatively higher classification accuracy by WCMFE, and the statistical significance is examined by two-sample t-test. The results suggest that WCMFE is superior to the other entropy-based and traditional feature extraction methods.     

Simultaneous determination of major components of Huangqi–Honghua extract in rat plasma using LC–MS/MS and application to a pharmacokinetic study

A sensitive and reliable LC–MS/MS method was developed and validated for simultaneous quantification of the major components of Huangqi–Honghua extact in rat plasma, including hydroxysafflor yellow A (HSYA), astragaloside IV (ASIV), calycosin‐7‐O‐β‐d ‐glucoside (CAG), calycosin, calycosin‐3′‐O‐glucuronide (C‐3′‐G) and calycosin‐3′‐O‐sulfate (C‐3′‐S). After extraction by protein precipitation with acetonitrile and methanol from plasma, the analytes were separated on a Hypersil BDS C₁₈ column by gradient elution with acetonitrile and 5 mM ammonium acetate. The detection was carried out on a triple quadrupole tandem mass spectrometer equipped with electrospray ionization source switched between negative and positive modes. HSYA was monitored in negative ionization mode from 0 to 4.9 min, and ASIV, CAG, calycosin, C‐3′‐G and C‐3′‐S were determined in positive ionization mode from 4.9 to 10 min. The lower limits of quantification of the analytes were 6.25 ng/mL for HSYA, 0.781 ng/mL for CAG and 1.56 ng/mL for ASIV and calycosin. The intra‐ and inter‐assay precision (RSD) values were within 13.43%, and accuracy (RE) ranged from ?8.75 to 9.92%. The validated method was then applied to the pharmacokinetic study of HSYA, ASIV, CAG, calycosin, C‐3′‐G and C‐3′‐S in rat after an oral administration of Huangqi–Honghua extract.