Overexpression of Aldose Reductase Render Mouse Hepatocytes More Sensitive to Acetaminophen Induced Oxidative Stress and Cell Death

Acetaminophen (APAP) a commonly used drug for decrease the fever and pain but is capable to induced hepatotoxicity at over dose. This study was carried out to investigate the effect of APAP on the expression of anti-apoptotic and antioxidative defense genes, and whether aldose reductase over-expressing plasmid capable to protect against APAP-induced oxidative stress and cell death. APAP treatment induced oxidative stress and hepatotoxicity, and significantly increased aldose reductase mRNA and protein expression in mouse hepatocyte (AML-12). Unexpectedly, AML-12 cells over-expressing aldose reductase augmented APAP-induced reduction in cell viability, reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, glutathione (GSH) depletion and glutathione S-transferase A2 expression. Moreover, over-expression of aldose reductase potentiated APAP induced reduction on proliferating cell nuclear antigen, B cell lymphoma-extra large (bcl-x_L), catalase, glutathione peroxidase-1 (GPx-1) and abolished APAP-induced B-cell lymphoma 2 (bcl-2) inductions. Further, over-expression of aldose reductase significantly abolished AMP activated protein kinase (AMPK) activity in APAP-treated cells and induced p53 expression. This results demonstrate that APAP induced toxicity in AML-12, increased aldose reductase expression, and over-expression of aldose reductase render this cell more susceptible to APAP induced oxidative stress and cell death, this probably due to inhibition AMPK or bcl-2 activity, or may due to competition between aldose reductase and glutathione reductase for NADPH.     

三种结缕草试管繁殖研究

以结缕草属的马尼拉草、结缕草和中华结缕草进行了试管繁殖的研究.以马尼拉草匍匐茎为外植体,通过芽直接增殖和愈伤组织分化途径形成了2个试管无性系;从结缕草和中华结缕草的实生苗中也筛选出了若干个试管无性系.嫩极丛在1/2MS培养基添加IBA或 NAA0.5 mg/L、IBA0.25mg/L+NAAO.25mg/L上生根,经38 d培养,马尼拉草生根率为100％,结缕草为88％～90％.移栽成活率马尼拉草在95％以上,结缕草高于90％.试管草移栽后生长旺盛。     

血管内皮生长因子和白细胞介素-12在急性白血病中的表达及临床意义

目的 通过检测急性白血病（AL）患者静脉血清中血管内皮生长因子（VEGF）和 白细胞介素12（IL-12）的含量，探讨VEGF和IL-12在急性白血病中的含量及临床意义。方法 应用定量酶联免疫吸附实验测定10例初诊未治、10例缓解期、5例复发患者和9例正常对照血清中VEGF和IL-12的含量。结果 初诊未治组的VEGF含量（521.06±163.85pg/ml）明显高于缓解组（307.62±55.40pg/ml）及对照组（262.01±141.66pg/ml）（p均<0.05）。对照组的IL-12水平（58.96±38.11pg/ml）与初诊复发组（初诊未治组与复发组的合称32.51±14.58pg/ml）、缓解组（71.67±119.09pg/ml）之间均有显著性差异（p均<0.05）。正常对照组VEGF的含量与IL-12之间存在负相关性。结论 VEGF和IL-12与AL的病情变化有一定的关系。     

形式化方法--Z语言在西瓜棋中应用的研究

Z语言是目前广泛使用的一种形式化方法语言。它具有简明、精确、无歧义的优点。本文利用Z语言对一种棋类游戏——西瓜棋进行了描述，并给出了西瓜棋游戏从状态模式到操作模式的需求规格说明。     

College selectivity and young adult health behaviors

Large literatures have shown important links between the quantity of completed education and health outcomes on one hand and the quality or selectivity of schooling on a host of adult outcomes, such as wages, on the other hand. However, little research attempts to produce evidence of the link between school quality and health. The paper presents the first evidence in the literature on the potential short and intermediate term effects of attending a selective college on health behaviors during and following college attendance. Using a variety of empirical methods, this paper shows strong evidence that college selectivity reduces tobacco and marijuana use but has small and possibly positive effects on binge drinking. The effects on weight behaviors are suggestive of reduced weight, potentially through diet, but not exercise change.     

Poisoning the mind: Arsenic contamination of drinking water wells and children's educational achievement in rural Bangladesh

Bangladesh has experienced the largest mass poisoning of a population in history owing to contamination of groundwater with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Prolonged drinking of such water risks development of diseases and therefore has implications for children's cognitive and psychological development. This study examines the effect of arsenic contamination of tubewells, the primary source of drinking water at home, on the learning outcome of school-going children in rural Bangladesh using recent nationally representative data on secondary school children. We unambiguously find a negative and statistically significant correlation between mathematics scores and arsenic-contaminated drinking tubewells at home, net of the child's socio-economic status, parental background and school specific unobserved correlates of learning. Similar correlations are found for an alternative measure of student achievement and subjective well-being (i.e. self-reported measure of life satisfaction), of the student. We conclude by discussing the policy implication of our findings in the context of the current debate over the adverse effect of arsenic poisoning on children.     

The impact of education on health knowledge

The theory on the demand for health suggests that schooling causes health because schooling increases the efficiency of health production. Alternatively, the allocative efficiency hypothesis argues that schooling alters the input mix chosen to produce health. This suggests that the more educated have more knowledge about the health production function and they have more health knowledge. This paper uses data from the 1997 and 2002 waves of the NLSY97 to conduct an investigation of the allocative efficiency hypothesis by analyzing whether education improves health knowledge. The survey design allows us to observe the increase in health knowledge of young adults after their level of schooling is increased by differential and plausibly exogenous amounts. Using nine different questions measuring health knowledge, we find weak evidence that an increase in education generates an improvement in health knowledge for those who ultimately attend college. For those with high school as the terminal degree, no relationship is found between education and health knowledge. These results imply that the allocative efficiency hypothesis may not be the primary reason for why schooling impacts health outcomes.     

School quality, child wellbeing and parents’ satisfaction

Child wellbeing at school and enjoyment of the learning environment are important economic outcomes, in particular because a growing body of research shows they are strongly linked to later educational attainments and labour market success. However, the standard working assumption in the economics of education is that parents choose schools on the basis of test-score performance, and concerns about child happiness are largely ignored. In this paper, we address this omission and investigate to what extent parents’ and children's views of their school are linked to test-score based performance, and to what extent parents’ judgements of school quality are linked to their child's happiness. To do so, we use information on stated attitudes from the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England (LSYPE) matched to administrative records on pupil achievements in England. Our results suggest that test-score based measures of school quality tend to dominate parental satisfaction with the learning environment. However, school quality along this dimension is not strongly associated with pupil happiness and wellbeing at school.