Sinomenine is an alkaloid derived from Sinomenium acutum. Recent studies have found that sinomenine can inhibit various cancers by inhibiting the proliferation, migration and invasion of tumors and inducing apoptosis. This study aims to investigate the effect and mechanism of sinomenine on inhibiting the migration and invasion of human lung adenocarcinoma cells in vitro. The results demonstrate that viabilities of A549 and H1299 cells were inhibited by sinomenine in a dose-dependent manner. When treated with sub-toxic doses of sinomenine, cell migration and invasion are markedly suppressed. Sinomenine decreases the mRNA level of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), MMP-9, and the extracellular inducer of matrix metalloproteinase (EMMPRIN/CD147), but elevates the expression of reversion-inducing cysteine-rich proteins with kazal motifs (RECK) and the tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 (TIMP-1) and TIMP-2. In addition, sinomenine significantly increases the expression of the epithelial marker E-cadherin but concomitantly decreases the expression of the mesenchymal marker vimentin, suggesting that it suppresses epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT). Moreover, sinomenine downregulates oncogenic microRNA-21 (miR-21), which has been known to target RECK. The downregulation of miR-21 decreases cell invasion, while the upregulation of miR-21 increases cell invasion. Furthermore, the downregulation of miR-21 stimulates the expression of RECK, TIMP-1/-2, and E-cadherin, but reduces the expression of MMP-2/-9, EMMPRIN/CD147, and vimentin. Taken together, the results reveal that the inhibition of A549 cell invasion by sinomenine may, at least in part, be through the downregulating expression of MMPs and miR-21. These findings demonstrate an attractive therapeutic potential for sinomenine in lung cancer anti-metastatic therapy.

A novel fiber optic localized plasmon resonance (FO-LPR) sensor composed of a D-shape optical fiber was proposed and demonstrated in the present study. The D-shape optical fiber was fabricated by a femtosecond laser micromachining system. The dimensions of the D-shape zone were 100 μm in depth measured from the surface of the polymer jacket layer, and the total length was 6 mm. After annealing treatment, the mean roughness of the surface was 231.7 nm as determined by AFM. The exposed surface of the D-shape fiber was modified with self-assembled gold nanoparticles to produce the FO-LPR sensor. The response of the sensor shows that the signal increases linearly with increasing refractive index. The sensor resolution of the sensor was determined to be 4.1×10 -4 RIU.

Antonio (UTSA). He teaches Six Sigma and lean methodologies, computer integrated manufacturing systems, and manufacturing systems engineering. He is among the core faculty of the Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Lean Systems at UTSA and has been offering short courses to the industry. His research interests include sustainability of manufacturing systems and web-based applications in manufacturing.

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Phase noise resulting in Common Phase Error (CPE) and Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) is a critical challenge to the implementation of OFDM systems. Modeling phase noise as a stationary Gaussian random process with the specified power spectrum density, different from conventional approaches which mostly relay on pilots to provide CPE estimation, we explore the statistical characteristics of the sufficient statistics then propose a pilot-aided decision-directed approach according to maximum-likelihood criterion. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm enjoys 2dB gain at moderate SNR and is quite robust against possible model mismatch.