Question: We present a general structural carbon nutrient balance hypothesis parallel to Bryant et al.’s defensive chemistry hypothesis. Our hypothesis suggests that because herb species require a lower investment of carbon per unit length of stem than do woody plants, herbs should be at a competitive advantage where the leaf area of plants in the ground layer is limited by light (or fixed carb...

Herbs have been regarded as aphrodisiacs in treating impotence for many centuries despite little true scientific evidence. Our latest refined penile venous stripping (PVS) technique is effective in treating impotence, although this procedure remains controversial. A synergic effect of PVS and oral herbs was confirmed in our practice but lacked rigorous scientific proof. The objective of this re...

Concurrent use of herbs may mimic, magnify, or oppose the effect of drugs. Plausible cases of herb-drug interactions include: bleeding when warfarin is combined with ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), garlic (Allium sativum), dong quai (Angelica sinensis), or danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza); mild serotonin syndrome in patients who mix St John's wort (Hypericum perforatum) with serotonin-reuptake inhibitors;...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a common health condition, so it is always interesting to learn of new developments in the treatment of this potentially disabling and painful disorder. The results of recent clinical trials involving the herb Boswellia serrata reveal some quite startling results that suggest this Ayurvedic herb is not only capable of relieving OA symptoms, but also might be disease-modif...

Multi-herb therapy has been widely used in Traditional Chinese medicine and tailored to meet the specific needs of each individual. However, the potential molecular or systems mechanisms of them to treat various diseases have not been fully elucidated. To address this question, a systems pharmacology approach, integrating pharmacokinetics, pharmacology and systems biology, is used to comprehens...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate health care professionals' knowledge on warfarin interactions with drugs and herbs. METHODS A self-administered questionnaire was developed to assess health care professionals' knowledge on warfarin interactions with drug and herb. Respondents were asked to classify 15 drugs that may effect on warfarin action as "enhance", "inhibit ", "no effect". The study sample invol...

BACKGROUND Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine are both popular in Taiwan. Approximately 14.1% of Taiwanese residents use Western drugs and Chinese herbs concurrently; therefore, drug-herb interaction is critical to patient safety. This paper presents a new procedure for reducing the risk of drug interactions. METHODS Hospital computer systems are modified to ensure that d...

Speech dereverberation is desirable in applications such as robust automatic speech recognition (ASR) in the real world. Although a number of dereverberation methods have been exploited, dereverberation is still a challenging problem especially when using a single microphone. To overcome this problem, a harmonicity based dereverberation method (HERB) has recently been proposed. HERB can blindly...