Benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) is characterized by uncontrolled proliferation of the prostate gland. Cynanchum wilfordii has been reported to improve sexual behavior in male rats. In this study, we investigated the protective effect of an aqueous extract of C. wilfordii (CWW) against BPH development in a testosterone-induced BPH rat model. The rats were divided into the following six groups: sham/vehicle; BPH/vehicle; BPH/finasteride; and three CWW doses (50, 100, and 200 mg/kg). After a 4-week treatment with CWW, the rats were euthanized at scheduled times, and their prostates were weighed, followed by a histopathological examination. Prostate growth inhibition rates in rats administered CWW 50, 100, and 200 mg/kg were 54.5%, 51.8%, and 50.1%, respectively. The BPH/CWW group showed decreased serum testosterone and dihydrotestosterone (DHT) levels compared to the BPH/vehicle group. Furthermore, the BPH/CWW group showed reduced prostate testosterone and DHT levels compared to the BPH/vehicle group. Mechanistically, the reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction revealed downregulated mRNA expression levels of the androgen receptor, 5α-reductase, and B-cell lymphoma-2 (Bcl-2) in the BPH/CWW200 group compared with those in the testosterone-induced groups. In conclusion, these findings show the effectiveness of CWW in slowing the progression of testosterone-induced BPH in rats.

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In this paper, we propose a frequency-domain estimating and time-domain compensating tone interference (TI) cancellation algorithm for direct-sequence spread-spectrum systems. In the previous works, the interference signal is estimated and compensated in the frequency-domain and then, with IFFT (inverse fast Fourier transform), the compensated frequency-domain signal is transformed to the time-domain signal for the remaining receiver operations. Unlike the previous works, the proposed algorithm estimate the TI signals in frequency-domain and compensates the resulting estimated TI signals in time-domain and thus, does not requires IFFT. Hence, the proposed algorithm not only shows the virtually identical performance but also requires lower hardware complexity compared to the schemes proposed in the previous works. Keywords-tone interference cancellation, direct-sequence spread spectrum, fast Fourier transformI.

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This study investigated the photovoltaic properties and microstructure of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) with an ITO/SnO2/perovskite/HTL/Au electrode configuration, developed with varying sintering temperatures (100~200°C). The goal was to use SnO2 ink as the electron transport layer (ETL) by low-temperature sintering. TGA-DTA analysis was conducted to determine the optimum sintering temperature of the SnO2 ink and the photovoltaic properties were examined by solar simulator analysis. To analyze the microstructure, a 3D profiler, optical microscope, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used. The TGA-DTA analysis results show that SnO2 ink was effectively sintered at the low temperature of 80°C and above. As for the photovoltaic(PV) properties, the PV efficiency was approximately 15% at 120~150°C, and increased to a maximum of 17.16% at 180°C, and then fell to 12% at 200°C. The RMS value, a representation of surface roughness, of the SnO2 layer according to sintering temperature incrementally decreased, reached its lowest at 180°C, before finally increasing. The microstructure analysis showed that the perovskite layer formed on the SnO2 at a sintering temperature of 180°C had a relatively greater grain size of 402 nm and a thickness of 432 nm, thereby improving the PSC’s PV properties. These results suggest it is possible to implement a PCS with SnO2 ETL by low temperature sintering process.

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This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of Cynanchum wilfordii Hemsley, Phlomis umbrosa Turcz., and Angelica gigas Nakai extract (CPAE) on the reduction of tail skin temperature (TST) in ovariectomized (OVX) rats. To evaluate TST reduction in ovariectomized rats, 125, 250, and 1000 mg/kg CPAE was administered to rats for 1 week. The measurement of TST after the induction of artificial stress revealed a significant temperature reduction effect in the CPAE administration group (p<0.05). The TST induced by the injection of yohimbine, to induce hot flashes, was found to decrease as the administered dose of CPAE increased from 10 min to 20min (125 and 250 mg/kg/day, p<0.05; 1000 mg/kg/day, p<0.01). In addition, in a drug interaction test between tamoxifen, an anti-estrogen drug, and CPAE, no significant difference was found between the pharmacokinetic (PK) profiles after the administration of tamoxifen only and the combination of tamoxifen and CPAE. We also found that CPAE did not affect CYP2d4 and CYP3a2, which affect tamoxifen metabolism, in a subsequent experiment on liver tissues extracted during the drug interaction test. In this study, we found that CPAE inhibited temperature increase on the tail skin of OVX rats, and therefore is effective in the improvement of hot flashes. CPAE may be potentially used for the improvement of hot flashes induced by the administration of tamoxifen.