Oxidative stress plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of acute pancreatitis (AP). Isoliquiritigenin (ISL) is a flavonoid monomer with confirmed antioxidant activity. However, the specific effects of ISL on AP have not been determined. In this study, we aimed to investigate the protective effect of ISL on AP using two mouse models. In the caerulein-induced mild acute pancreatitis (MAP) model, dynamic changes in oxidative stress injury of the pancreatic tissue were observed after AP onset. We found that ISL administration reduced serum amylase and lipase levels and alleviated the histopathological manifestations of pancreatic tissue in a dose-dependent manner. Meanwhile, ISL decreased the oxidative stress injury and increased the protein expression of the Nrf2/HO-1 pathway. In addition, after administering a Nrf2 inhibitor (ML385) or HO-1 inhibitor (zinc protoporphyrin) to block the Nrf2/HO-1 pathway, we failed to observe the protective effects of ISL on AP in mice. Furthermore, we found that ISL mitigated the severity of pancreatic tissue injury and pancreatitis-associated lung injury in a severe acute pancreatitis model induced by L-arginine. Taken together, our data for the first time confirmed the protective effects of ISL on AP in mice via inhibition of oxidative stress and modulation of the Nrf2/HO-1 pathway.

A methodology is presented for the identification of the best locations to install a given number of sensors on a structure so as to extract as much information as possible for structural model updating. The information entropy measure is employed to quantify the uncertainties of the set of identified model parameters. The problem of optimal sensor placement is formulated as a discrete optimization problem in which the information entropy measure is minimized and the sensor configurations are taken as the minimization variables. This discrete optimization problem is computationally demanding especially for large-scale structures. An efficient genetic algorithm-based optimization method is developed to solve this minimization problem to make the entropy-based optimal sensor configuration approach applicable for large-scale structural systems. A typical transmission tower is first used as a numerical example to illustrate the proposed methodology. The performance of the optimal sensor placement technique and the proposed optimization method are then verified using the measured dynamic data from a 2.6 m high transmission tower model under laboratory conditions. The computational time of the proposed optimization method can be reduced in the future by making use of the parallel computing technology.

Genetic engineering technology has been successfully used in many plant species, but is limited in woody plants, especially in bamboos. Ma bamboo (Dendrocalamus latiflorus Munro) is one of the most important bamboo species in Asia, and its genetic improvement was largely restricted by the lack of an efficient regeneration and transformation method. Here we reported a plantlet regeneration and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation protocol by using Ma bamboo young shoots as explants. Under our optimized conditions, embryogenic calluses were successfully induced from the excised young shoots on callus induction medium and rapidly grew on callus multiplication medium. Shoots and roots were regenerated on shoot induction medium and root induction medium, respectively, with high efficiency. An Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation protocol of Ma bamboo was established, verified by PCR and GUS staining. Furthermore, the maize Lc gene under the control of the ubiquitin promoter was successfully introduced into Ma bamboo genome and generated an anthocyanin over-accumulation phenotype. Our methods established here will facilitate the basic research as well as genetic breeding of this important bamboo species.Key achievements: A stable and high efficiency regeneration and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation protocol for Ma bamboo from vegetative organ is established.

Assume a time-harmonic elastic wave is incident onto a penetrable anisotropic body embedded into a homogeneous isotropic background medium. We propose an equivalent variational formulation in a truncated bounded domain and show the uniqueness and existence of weak solutions by applying the Fredholm alternative and using properties of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map in both two and three dimensions. The Fréchet derivative of the near-field solution operator with respect to the boundary of the scatterer is derived. As an application, we design a descent algorithm for recovering the interface from the near-field data of one or several incident directions and frequencies. Numerical examples in 2D are presented to show the validity and accuracy of our methods.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link:http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/8364/ Link to published version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TBME. 2015.2393256 Copyright and reuse: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/TBME.2015.2393256, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING -TBME-00837-2014.R2 recently [3]. Early diagnosis of breast cancer is one of the most challenging and important aspects for the management of the disease, as it may be possible to detect the cancer before it spreads [4]. Three commonly used screening methods for breast cancer are X-ray mammography [5], Ultrasound (US) [6], and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) [7]. A higher rate of false-positive examination results with US makes it less popular than mammography [8], whereas MRI is usually suggested to be used in conjunction with mammography [9]. Despite the merits of mammography, its deficiencies are evident: low sensitivity [10], painful breast compression [11], and radiation exposure from X-rays, which brings a potential threat of increasing the cancer risk [12]. The limitations of existing methods constitute a motivation for better options.In the last few decades, different modalities of microwave imaging for breast cancer detection, including passive, hybrid, and active approaches, have attracted considerable attention. The passive imaging techniques seek to identify tumors based on the temperature differences between normal and cancerous breast tissues with the aid of radiometers [13]-[14]. Hybrid approaches differentiate biological tissues by the distinctive acoustic waves radiated from the thermoelastic expansion when tissues are under microwave illumination [15]. Active methods distinguish normal and malignant breast tissues based on their contrast of dielectric properties at microwave frequencies [16]. Based on the reconstruction technique used, active detection methods can be categorized into microwave tomography and ultrawideband (UWB) radar based imaging. In microwave tomography, the spatial distributions of dielectric constant and/or conductivity within the breast are iteratively calculated, thus nonlinear inverse scattering problems are involved. More details on tomographic imaging systems can be found in [17], [18]. UWB radar methods, on the other hand, aim to identify the presence and location of strong scatterers such as tumors, rather than quantitatively computing the distribution of dielectric properties.UWB radar based imaging systems face several challenges for breast...