Exotic medicinal plants from the Silk Road promote the diversification of traditional Chinese medicines.

BACKGROUND: As a political, economic, and cultural exchange channel between ancient China and countries in Asia, Europe, and Africa, the Silk Road has promoted political, trade, and cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries in Chinese history and also promoted the development of traditional Chinese medicine. METHODS: This article summarizes the introduction of medicinal materials from the Han to Qing Dynasties, spanning approximately 2000 years. RESULTS: A total of 235 types of medicinal plant materials were imported. An analysis of 178 medicinal herbs of known origin, belonging to 72 families revealed their effectiveness in treating 20 diseases. The maximum number of medicinal herbs used to treat gastrointestinal and digestive disorders (GAS) was 122. The applications and origin of exotic medicinal materials, including draconis sanguis and olibanum have changed during the development of the Silk Road. Imported medicinal materials are affected by five factors, including local demand, adaptability, cultural exchange, scarcity, and medical theory. Five modes for introducing medicinal materials include the onshore Silk Road, the maritime Silk Road, diplomatic envoys and gifts, overseas Chinese, cultural exchange, and medical integration. The application of exotic medicinal materials expands the resources and application fields of traditional Chinese medicine, enriching the theory of traditional Chinese medicine. CONCLUSION: Traditional Chinese medicinal compounds introduced to China through the ancient Silk Road not only promoted their integration into foreign medicine but also had long-lasting impacts to date and over a wide range, thereby considerably affecting the pharmaceutical and general healthcare industries.

The Enhanced Red Emission and Improved Thermal Stability of CaAlSiN3:Eu2+ Phosphors by Using Nano-EuB6 as Raw Material.

Synthesizing phosphors with high performance is still a necessary work for phosphor-converted white light-emitting diodes (W-LEDs). In this paper, three series of CaAlSiN3:Eu2+ (denoted as CASN:Eu2+) phosphors using Eu2O3, EuN and EuB6 as raw materials respectively are fabricated by under the alloy precursor normal pressure nitridation synthesis condition. We demonstrate that CASN:Eu2+ using nano-EuB6 as raw material shows higher emission intensity than others, which is ascribed to the increment of Eu2+ ionic content entering into the crystal lattice. An improved thermal stability can also be obtained by using nano-EuB6 due to the structurally stable status, which is assigned to the partial substitution of Eu-O (Eu-N) bonds by more covalent Eu-B ones that leads to a higher structural rigidity. In addition, the W-LEDs lamp was fabricated to explore its possible application in W-LEDs based on blue LEDs. Our results indicate that using EuB6 as raw materials can provide an effective way of enhancing the red emission and improving the thermal stability of the CASN:Eu2+ red phosphor.

[Image identification for microscopic structures of Mongolian herbal flowers with invariant moments].

Microscopic characteristics of several Mongolian Herbal flowers were extracted by improved Pseudo-Jacobi (p = 4, q = 2)-Fourier Moments (PJFM's), and 368 different versions of 28 microscopic characteristics of these herbs were identified by using the minimum-mean-distance rule. The experimental results showed that the average identification rate reaches as high as 98.1%. Therefore, this study can provide new techniques for digitalization and visualization of microscopic characteristics of Mongolian Herbs.

Image analysis by pseudo-Jacobi (p = 4, q = 3)-Fourier moments.

Pseudo-Jacobi (p = 4, q = 3)-Fourier moments (PJFMs) based on Jacobi polynomials are described. The new orthogonal radial polynomials have almost uniformly distributed (n + 2) zeros in the region of small radial distance 0 < or = r < or = 1. Both theoretical and experimental results indicate that PJFMs are better than orthogonal Fourier-Mellin moments in terms of reconstruction errors and signal-to-noise ratio. The PJFMs are normalized to shift, rotation, scale, and intensity invariance, and some pattern-recognition experiments are described.