The antidiabetic activity of the total lignan from the plant Fructus Arctii, used in China for the control of diabetes, was investigated in models of alloxan-induced diabetic mice and hyperglycemic-hyperlipidemic diabetic rats. The biochemical parameters studied were: blood glucose, glucose tolerance, serum insulin, serum triglycerides, total cholesterol and high density lipoprotein (HDL). Total lignan was given to mice and rats daily for 10 days at doses of 2.0, 1.0, 0.5 g/kg and 1.38, 0.69, 0.35 g/kg respectively. The alloxan-diabetic animals showed significant reductions in plasma glucose, triglycerides and total cholesterol after treatment with the total lignan from the plant Fructus Arctii and glibenclamide (used as standard) compared with the diabetic controls, while the glucose tolerance, serum insulin level and HDL-cholesterol were elevated without the risk of hypoglycemia. In conclusion, the total lignan from the plant Fructus Arctii has been proven to be a safer antidiabetic agent and might help to prevent diabetic complications. It can serve as a good adjuvant in the present armamentarium of antidiabetic drugs.

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Garnet occurs in a wide range of rock types, from mantle peridotites to granites, from eclogites to skarns. In recent years, garnet LA‐ICP‐MS (Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry) U‐Pb dating has provided a powerful solution for retrieving the ages of rock formations, but successful dating is often prohibited by the low concentration of U. However, the concentration of U, a trace element of garnet, is unknown prior to the LA‐ICP‐MS analysis. In this study, we propose that the U concentration in garnet can be predicted by the contents of major and minor elements, which can be quantitatively obtained by EPMA (electron probe microanalysis). Using a supervised machine learning method (neural network), a model is trained to discriminate U‐rich (>2 ppm) and U‐poor (<2 ppm) garnets, based on EPMA results. Results of cross validation shows that the model has an average accuracy of ∼92% and is a powerful tool in detecting datable U‐rich garnet. To facilitate the use of the discriminator, it is programmed as a stand‐alone Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (HighUGarnet) and users directly paste the molar proportions of garnet end members into it and obtain the discrimination result.