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Agroforestry system, as the most promising substitute plantation approach, has been widely regarded as a prominent strategy for mitigating the conflicts between rapid growing population and limited arable land resources. This paper aims to screen the optimal planting pattern for <i>Gentiana rigescens</i> base on the content of gentiopicroside, providing the scientific basis for sustainable supply and application of this plant. Generally, Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy is effective to integrally monitor and reflect the whole constituents of natural materials. FTIR combined with chemometrics was used for distinguishing the <i>G. rigescens</i> from different compound planting models in this research. The result of partial least square discriminant analysis implied that planting year of <i>G. rigescens</i> had a greater impact on the content of gentiopicroside than that of <i>Camellia sinensis</i>. The gentiopicroside content in 1.5- or 2-year-old <i>G. rigescens</i> was higher. Wavelet denoising was effective for the classification. Samples which had higher contents of gentiopicroside were clustered together relatively, while those with lower contents of gentiopicroside were classified into the other large category. Our investigation revealed that <i>G. rigescens</i> can be successfully cultivated with <i>C. sinensis</i>, which met the requirement of the gentiopicroside content recommended by Pharmacopoeia of the People’s Republic of China. That 2-year-old <i>G. rigescens</i> grown with 12-year-old <i>C. sinensis</i> was the optimal compound planting pattern, according this study. The present study provided the optimal compound planting pattern of <i>G. rigescens</i>, which is helpful for improving land-use efficiency and economic returns.
Objective: Prehypertension is a new category designated by the Seventh Report of the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation, and Treatment of High Blood Pressure ( JNC7) in 2003. Managing prehypertension with nonpharmacological intervention is possibly beneficial to the prevention of hypertension. In this study, we observed the effect of slow abdominal breathing combined with electromyographic (EMG) biofeedback training on blood pressure (BP) in prehypertensives and assessed the changes of heart rate variability (HRV) in order to find an optional intervention to prevent hypertension and acquire some experimental data to clarify the underlying neural mechanism.Methods: Twenty-two (22) postmenopausal women with prehypertension were randomly assigned to either the experiment group or the control group. The experiment group performed 10 sessions of slow abdominal breathing (six cycles/min) combined with frontal electromyographic (EMG) biofeedback training and daily home practice, while the control group only performed slow abdominal breathing and daily home practice. BP and HRV (including R–R interval and standard deviation of the normal–normal intervals [SDNN]) were measured.
Results: Participants with prehypertension could lower their systolic blood pressure (SBP) 8.4 mm Hg ( p < 0.001) and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) 3.9 mm Hg ( p < 0.05) using slow abdominal breathing combined with EMG biofeedback. The slow abdominal breathing also significantly decreased the SBP 4.3 mm Hg ( p < 0.05), while it had no effect on the DBP ( p > 0.05). Repeated-measures analyses showed that the biofeedback group þ abdominal respiratory group (ABþBF) training was more effective in lowering the BP than the slow breathing ( p < 0.05). Compared with the control group, the R–R interval increased significantly during the training in the ABþBF group ( p < 0.05). The SDNN increased remarkably in both groups during the training ( p < 0.05).
Conclusions: Slow abdominal breathing combined with EMG biofeedback is an effective intervention to manage prehypertension. The possible mechanism is that slow abdominal breathing combined with EMG biofeedback could reduce sympathetic activity and meanwhile could enhance vagal activity.
A capillary zone electrophoresis method was developed for simultaneous determination of nine flavonoids, including two rare flavonols, in Tibetan medicine Anaphalis margaritacea. Baseline separation was performed at pH 9.6 with 25 mM Na(2)B(4)O(7) and 10 mM NaH(2)PO(4) buffer solution, 20 kV as driving voltage and 275 nm as detection wavelength. Repeatability tests showed that the R.S.D. of both intra- and inter-day migration times and peak areas were less than 5%. Recovery results ranged from 87.9% to 106.1%. Samples of A. margaritacea extracts were analyzed using the validated method, which is useful for its quality control.