Strong interaction between promoter and metal in Pd-Ba/TiO2 catalysts for formaldehyde oxidation.

As our previous works found, alkali metals have a common promotion effect on supported noble metals catalysts for formaldehyde (HCHO) oxidation. As second-group elements, alkaline earth metals (AEMs) are neighbors to the first-group elements and share some properties in common. However, detailed investigations into the specific mechanisms underlying AEMs' effects on HCHO oxidation remain limited. In this study, we found that Ba addition showed a similar promotion effect on HCHO oxidation for Pd/TiO2. Ba species stabilized Pd groups, improved the dispersion, and even caused a large number of monatomic-like Pd sites to appear, which may be attributed to the electronic interaction between promoter and metal (EIPM) between Ba and Pd. Besides, AEM loading had the important effect of increasing the electron density of metallic Pd nanoparticles, which further improved the ability for O2 activation and so enhanced the mobility of chemisorbed oxygen on the catalyst surface. For Pd/TiO2, the HCHO oxidation path is mainly HCHO→HCOOH→HCOO→H2O+CO2. By contrast, for Pd-Ba/TiO2, with more surface-active species, the formate intermediate was more likely to be directly oxidized into H2O and CO2, which is a more effective reaction pathway. The details of the EIPM between Pd and Ba were investigated by GPAW (DFT calculation module) in ASE (Atomic Simulation Environment). The AEM Ba acted as an electron donor and could interact with Pd d orbital electrons through BaO sp orbital electrons. Ba species were highly dispersed on the carrier due to the Ba-Ti interaction. Ba species dispersed over large areas stabilized the Pd particles and donated electrons to Pd. Therefore, adding an AEM is an efficacious strategy to improve the performance of the catalytic oxidation of HCHO.

Scopolamine mitigates oophorectomy-induced osteoporosis: potential mechanisms and direct effects on bone structure.

The aim of our research is to investigate the therapeutic effects of scopolamine (SCO) on osteoporosis and to explore the underlying mechanism. To study osteoporosis, we established an ovariectomy (OVX) model. The rats were divided into four groups: sham operation, OVX, OVX+SCO, and OVX+SCO+ML385 (Nrf2 inhibitor). ELISA, Realtime PCR, Western blot, and kits were utilised to assess the expression of related proteins and substances. The OVX rats exhibited significant weight gain, reduced bone volume, destruction of trabecular and cortical bone microstructure, decreased expression of ALP, OCN, OPN, COL1A1, Runx2, Nrf2 proteins, and CAT, SOD, GST, GPX levels while increased expression of TRAP protein and ROS levels. SCO was able to restore these indices in OVX rats, while ML385 blocked the effects of SCO. In conclusion, SCO inhibits oxidative stress response to exert therapeutic effects on osteoporosis by activating the Nrf2 signalling pathway.

NAT10 resolves harmful nucleolar R-loops depending on its helicase domain and acetylation of DDX21.

BACKGROUND: Aberrant accumulation of R-loops leads to DNA damage, genome instability and even cell death. Therefore, the timely removal of harmful R-loops is essential for the maintenance of genome integrity. Nucleolar R-loops occupy up to 50% of cellular R-loops due to the frequent activation of Pol I transcription. However, the mechanisms involved in the nucleolar R-loop resolution remain elusive. The nucleolar acetyltransferase NAT10 harbors a putative RecD helicase domain (RHD), however, if NAT10 acts in the R-loop resolution is still unknown. METHODS: NAT10 knockdown cell lines were constructed using CRISPR/Cas9 technology and short hairpin RNA targeting NAT10 mRNA, respectively. The level of R-loops was detected by immunofluorescent staining combined with RNase H treatment. The helicase activity of NAT10 or DDX21 was determined by in vitro helicase experiment. The interaction between NAT10 and DDX21 was verified by co-immunoprecipitation, immunofluorescent staining and GST pull-down experiments. Acetylation sites of DDX21 by NAT10 were analyzed by mass spectrometry. NAT10 knockdown-induced DNA damage was evaluated by immunofluorescent staining and Western blot detecting γH2AX. RESULTS: Depletion of NAT10 led to the accumulation of nucleolar R-loops. NAT10 resolves R-loops through an RHD in vitro and in cells. However, Flag-NAT10 ∆RHD mutant still partially reduced R-loop levels in the NAT10-depleted cells, suggesting that NAT10 might resolve R-loops through additional pathways. Further, the acetyltransferase activity of NAT10 is required for the nucleolar R-loop resolution. NAT10 acetylates DDX21 at K236 and K573 to enhance the helicase activity of DDX21 to unwind nucleolar R-loops. The helicase activity of DDX21 significantly decreased by Flag-DDX21 2KR and increased by Flag-DDX21 2KQ in cells and in vitro. Consequently, NAT10 depletion-induced nucleolar R-loop accumulation led to DNA damage, which was rescued by co-expression of Flag-DDX21 2KQ and Flag-NAT10 G641E, demonstrating that NAT10 resolves nucleolar R-loops through bipartite pathways. CONCLUSION: We demonstrate that NAT10 is a novel R-loop resolvase and it resolves nucleolar R-loops depending on its helicase activity and acetylation of DDX21. The cooperation of NAT10 and DDX21 provides comprehensive insights into the nucleolar R-loop resolution for maintaining genome stability.

EXPLORING BACKDOOR ATTACKS IN OFF-THE-SHELF UNSUPERVISED DOMAIN ADAPTATION FOR SECURING CARDIAC MRI-BASED DIAGNOSIS.

The off-the-shelf model for unsupervised domain adaptation (OSUDA) has been introduced to protect patient data privacy and intellectual property of the source domain without access to the labeled source domain data. Yet, an off-the-shelf diagnosis model, deliberately compromised by backdoor attacks during the source domain training phase, can function as a parasite-host, disseminating the backdoor to the target domain model during the OSUDA stage. Because of limitations in accessing or controlling the source domain training data, OSUDA can make the target domain model highly vulnerable and susceptible to prominent attacks. To sidestep this issue, we propose to quantify the channel-wise backdoor sensitivity via a Lipschitz constant and, explicitly, eliminate the backdoor infection by overwriting the backdoor-related channel kernels with random initialization. Furthermore, we propose to employ an auxiliary model with a full source model to ensure accurate pseudo-labeling, taking into account the controllable, clean target training data in OSUDA. We validate our framework using a multi-center, multi-vendor, and multi-disease (M&M) cardiac dataset. Our findings suggest that the target model is susceptible to backdoor attacks during OSUDA, and our defense mechanism effectively mitigates the infection of target domain victims.

"Blue-red-purple" multicolored lateral flow immunoassay for simultaneous detection of GM crops utilizing RPA and CRISPR/Cas12a.

Advanced multiplexed testing techniques should be designed and developed to ensure an accurate and reliable evaluation for unknown samples. In this study, an efficient platform coupled with the "Blue-Red-Purple" strategy based on recombinant polymerase amplification (RPA), CRISPR/Cas12a and lateral flow strip was established, which could realize the dual-target detection of CP4-EPSPS and Cry1Ab/Ac in genetically modified crops. The lateral flow immunoassay was developed using different colored microspheres to label the antibodies to realize the visualization of results and avoid cross-reactions. The proposed method exhibits high specificity, sensitivity and stability. The visual detection limits of standard plasmids and real samples reached 10 copies/µL and 0.5 %, respectively, which could be stored at 4 °C for 12 months with high detection ability. Moreover, the entire detection process could be completed within 50 min without any complex instruments or professional operators. These findings indicated that a sensitive, specific, rapid and accurate method was established for on-site detection of GM crops.

Hepatocyte-derived Igκ promotes HCC progression by stabilizing electron transfer flavoprotein subunit α to facilitate fatty acid ß-oxidation.

BACKGROUND: Lipid metabolism dysregulation is a key characteristic of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) onset and progression. Elevated expression of immunoglobulin (Ig), especially the Igκ free light chain with a unique Vκ4-1/Jκ3 rearrangement in cancer cells, is linked to increased malignancy and has been implicated in colon cancer tumorigenesis. However, the role of Igκ in HCC carcinogenesis remains unclear. The aim of this study was to elucidate the pivotal roles of hepatocyte-derived Igκ in HCC development. METHODS: The rearrangement sequence and expression level of hepatocyte-derived Igκ in HCC cells were determined via RT-PCR, Sanger sequencing, immunohistochemistry, and western blot analysis. The function of Igκ in HCC tumorigenesis was assessed by silencing Igκ using siRNA or gRNA in various HCC cell lines. To assess the role of Igκ in HCC pathogenesis in vivo, a mouse model with hepatocyte-specific Igκ knockout and diethylnitrosamine (DEN) and carbon tetrachloride (CCL4)-induced HCC was utilized. The molecular mechanism by which Igκ affects HCC tumorigenesis was investigated through multiomics analyses, quantitative real-time PCR, immunoprecipitation, mass spectrometry, immunofluorescence, and metabolite detection. RESULTS: We confirmed that Igκ, especially Vκ4-1/Jκ3-Igκ, is highly expressed in human HCC cells. Igκ depletion inhibited HCC cell proliferation and migration in vitro, and hepatocyte-specific Igκ deficiency ameliorated HCC progression in mice with DEN and CCL4-induced HCC in vivo. Mechanistically, Vκ4-1/Jκ3-Igκ interacts with electron transfer flavoprotein subunit α (ETFA), delaying its protein degradation. Loss of Igκ led to a decrease in the expression of mitochondrial respiratory chain complexes III and IV, resulting in aberrant fatty acid ß-oxidation (FAO) and lipid accumulation, which in turn inhibited HCC cell proliferation and migration. CONCLUSION: Our findings indicate that the Igκ/ETFA axis deregulates fatty acid ß-oxidation, contributing to HCC progression, which suggests that targeting fatty acid metabolism may be an effective HCC treatment strategy. The results of this study suggest that hepatocyte-derived Vκ4-1/Jκ3-Igκ may serve as a promising therapeutic target for HCC.

Two-dimensional multifunctional metal-organic frameworks with large in-plane negative Poisson ratios and photocatalytic water splitting properties.

Auxetic materials with multifunctional properties are highly sought after for application in modern nano-devices. However, the majority of reported inorganic auxetic materials exhibit low negative Poisson's ratios (NPR), poor flexibility, and limited functionality. In this study, we employ density-functional-theory (DFT) first-principles simulations to design a series of two-dimensional (2D) metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) M2C4X4 (M = Cu, Ag, Au; X = O, S, NCN) that display intriguing auxetic behavior, superior flexibility and appropriate photocatalytic water-splitting properties. These M2C4X4 MOFs are assembled from carbon tetragon motifs and exist in both cis- and trans-isomer forms, with the NPR ranging from -0.17 to -0.90. Notably, trans-Cu2C4(NCN)4 exhibits a high NPR of -0.90, while cis-Cu2C4(NCN)4 achieves an NPR of -0.67. Both isomers demonstrate excellent flexibility, characterized by ultra-low Young's modulus and high fracture strengths. Furthermore, their direct band gaps, strong light-harvesting capabilities, and long excited-state lifetimes make them promising candidates for the photocatalytic oxygen evolution reaction in water. These results provide a viable strategy for the design and synthesis of novel optoelectronic multifunctional materials.

Tagged-to-Cine MRI Sequence Synthesis via Light Spatial-Temporal Transformer.

Tagged magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been successfully used to track the motion of internal tissue points within moving organs. Typically, to analyze motion using tagged MRI, cine MRI data in the same coordinate system are acquired, incurring additional time and costs. Consequently, tagged-to-cine MR synthesis holds the potential to reduce the extra acquisition time and costs associated with cine MRI, without disrupting downstream motion analysis tasks. Previous approaches have processed each frame independently, thereby overlooking the fact that complementary information from occluded regions of the tag patterns could be present in neighboring frames exhibiting motion. Furthermore, the inconsistent visual appearance, e.g., tag fading, across frames can reduce synthesis performance. To address this, we propose an efficient framework for tagged-to-cine MR sequence synthesis, leveraging both spatial and temporal information with relatively limited data. Specifically, we follow a split-and-integral protocol to balance spatialtemporal modeling efficiency and consistency. The light spatial-temporal transformer (LiST2) is designed to exploit the local and global attention in motion sequence with relatively lightweight training parameters. The directional product relative position-time bias is adapted to make the model aware of the spatial-temporal correlation, while the shifted window is used for motion alignment. Then, a recurrent sliding fine-tuning (ReST) scheme is applied to further enhance the temporal consistency. Our framework is evaluated on paired tagged and cine MRI sequences, demonstrating superior performance over comparison methods.

Liquid Metal-Based Elastomer Composite with Selective Switchable Adhesion to Solids.

Selective switchable adhesion has recently attracted much attention due to its wide applications in transfer printing, information transfer, and flexible electronics. However, selective adhesive materials often have a complex adhesion or preparation process, which limits their use. To overcome this problem, this study prepares a composite of liquid metal foam and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with selective photocontrolled adhesion, which can directly adhere to solids at room temperature. Utilizing the photoinduced phase transition of liquid metals, solid adhesion can be regulated by changing the backing layer modulus of the adhesive layer. Since the phase transition process is gradually completed by heat transfer from the illuminated side to the backlight side that adheres to the solid, the melting area on the backlight side can be regulated by controlling the light time, which determines the adhesion regulation area. Therefore, the accuracy of the adhesion regulation can reach less than 0.9 mm without relying on the accuracy of the infrared light. Moreover, based on the selective switchable adhesion, the selective transfer of solids with different scales can be achieved at room temperature. The findings of this study may provide strategies for the simple preparation of selective adhesive materials and the improvement of control accuracy.

Tuning the Fe-Gd nanoparticles co-functionalized mesoporous carbon from sphere to nanobowl for advanced bioapplications.

Studies on the function-integrated nanocomposites with well-tuned morphologies have received considerable interest. Here, we reported the preparation of mesoporous carbon nanobowl integrated with stoichiometric γ-Fe2O3 and GdPO4 nanoparticles (Fe-Gd/MCN-B) for morphological advantage exploration. Followed by (i) emulsion-induced interface anisotropic assembly of polydopamine, (ii) solvent evaporation-induced sorption of Wells-Dawson-like heterometallic cluster of {Fe6Gd6P6} and (iii) temperature-programmed carbonization, Fe-Gd/MCN-B with the size around 200 nm was isolated. Our in-vitro studies revealed that Fe-Gd/MCN-B showed a 63.0 % amplified photoacoustic (PA) signal intensity as compared with its nanospherical analogue of Fe-Gd/MCN-S owing to the enhanced light harvesting and photothermal conversion on the interface of its nanobowl morphology. Furthermore, the combined magnetic resonance (MR) imagining, drug delivery and photothermal treatment efficacy in Fe-Gd/MCN-B were also validated in-vitro. These results demonstrated that the delicate design of the morphology of function-integrated nanocomposites is an available way for enhanced imaging performance.

Environmental justice of Texas recreational water quality - The disproportionate E. coli levels and trends.

The presence of pathogens is one of the leading causes of stream water quality impairment in the US. Escherichia coli (E. coli) is a fecal pathogen indicator and also signals the presence of more pathogenic microbes. Although it is reported that Black, Indigenous, and communities of color suffer more from E. coli contamination, there is a lack of investigation of the potential inequality of E. coli contamination in recreational waterbodies, particularly regarding whether this inequality persists over the long term. Using E. coli monitoring data from 1,424 stations from 2001 to 2021 in Texas, we tested the research hypotheses of racial and economic inequalities in E. coli levels and trends with quantile regression and logistic regression approaches. We found that economic disparities had a more significant relationship with E. coli contamination in Texas recreational waterbodies than racial disparities after controlling for building age, land covers, imperviousness, and precipitation. The economic disparities in E. coli contamination were more prevalent after 2010 and in extreme E. coli levels. In addition, implementing watershed protection plans could mitigate the economic disparities associated with the rising trend of E. coli levels between 2001 and 2021. Findings from this research underscore clean surface water deprivation from underserved communities and call for inclusive watershed management strategies to address the water quality injustice.

Treatment-wise Glioblastoma Survival Inference with Multi-parametric Preoperative MRI.

In this work, we aim to predict the survival time (ST) of glioblastoma (GBM) patients undergoing different treatments based on preoperative magnetic resonance (MR) scans. The personalized and precise treatment planning can be achieved by comparing the ST of different treatments. It is well established that both the current status of the patient (as represented by the MR scans) and the choice of treatment are the cause of ST. While previous related MR-based glioblastoma ST studies have focused only on the direct mapping of MR scans to ST, they have not included the underlying causal relationship between treatments and ST. To address this limitation, we propose a treatment-conditioned regression model for glioblastoma ST that incorporates treatment information in addition to MR scans. Our approach allows us to effectively utilize the data from all of the treatments in a unified manner, rather than having to train separate models for each of the treatments. Furthermore, treatment can be effectively injected into each convolutional layer through the adaptive instance normalization we employ. We evaluate our framework on the BraTS20 ST prediction task. Three treatment options are considered: Gross Total Resection (GTR), Subtotal Resection (STR), and no resection. The evaluation results demonstrate the effectiveness of injecting the treatment for estimating GBM survival.

A comprehensive investigation of the adsorption behaviour and mechanism of industrial waste sintering and bayer red muds for heavy metals.

The issue of heavy metal pollution is a critical global concern that requires urgent solution. However, conventional heavy metal adsorbents are too costly to be applied in large-scale engineering. In this study, adsorption behavior and mechanism of sintering red mud (RM-A) and bayer red mud (RM-B) for heavy metals were investigated to address the disposal of red mud as industrial waste and remediation of heavy metal pollution. Batch adsorption experiments were conducted to explore the adsorption performances of RM-A and RM-B under various conditions. Characterization of RM-A and RM-B before and after adsorption by XRD, FTIR and SEM-EDX was applied to investigate the specific adsorption behavior and mechanism. Adsorption experiments of both RM-A and RM-B fitted pseudo-second-order kinetic model and Langmuir isotherm model, with estimated maximum adsorption capacity of 21.96 and 25.19 mg/g for Cd2+, 21.47 and 26.06 mg/g for Cu2+ and 55.47 and 59.65 mg/g for Pb2+, respectively. Precipitation transformation of calcite was the primary adsorption mechanism for RM-A, whereas ion exchange of cancrinite, surface coordination compounds of hematite and minor precipitation transformation of calcite accounted for the adsorption mechanism for RM-B. Overall, RM-A and RM-B exhibited best adsorption performance for Pb2+, with RM-B showing greater adsorption capacity attributed to its higher specific surface area. This study compared the adsorption properties of RM-A and RM-B for the first time and demonstrated that both red muds can be effectively applied to remove heavy metals, thereby contributing to the sustainable industrial waste management and resourceful reuse.

Acalabrutinib in Chinese patients with relapsed/refractory chronic lymphocytic leukemia: Primary analysis from an open-label, multicenter phase 1/2 trial.

Acalabrutinib is a highly selective Bruton tyrosine kinase inhibitor approved in the United States and Europe for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) based on phase 3 trials with limited representation of Asian populations. This phase 1/2 trial evaluates acalabrutinib in Chinese adults with relapsed/refractory (R/R) CLL receiving acalabrutinib 100 mg twice daily in 28-day cycles until disease progression or treatment discontinuation due to adverse events (AEs) presenting substantial clinical risk. The primary endpoint was blinded independent central review (BICR)-assessed overall response rate (ORR). A total of 60 patients from 20 sites in China received acalabrutinib (median age 62 years; median 1 prior therapy line; 21.7% with del(17p) and/or TP53 mutation; 51.7% with unmutated IGHV). Median total treatment duration was 19.4 months (range 0.6-28.2) with 53 patients (88.3%) receiving acalabrutinib at data cutoff; median study follow-up was 20.2 months. BICR-assessed ORR was 85.0% (95% CI, 73.4-92.9). Median duration of response, progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS) were not reached. Estimated 12-month and 18-month PFS rates were 91.5% (95% CI, 80.9-96.4) and 78.8% (95% CI, 60.9-89.2); OS rates were both 96.7% (95% CI, 87.3-99.2). AEs of grade ≥ 3 occurred in 25 patients (41.7%), most commonly decreased neutrophil count (13.3%, n = 8), pneumonia (6.7%, n = 4), and upper respiratory tract infection (6.7%, n = 4). AEs led to treatment discontinuation in 2 patients (paraneoplastic pemphigus; rectal neoplasm). This study demonstrated high ORR in acalabrutinib-treated Chinese patients with R/R CLL with no unexpected safety concerns. This trial is registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT03932331).

Speech Motion Anomaly Detection via Cross-Modal Translation of 4D Motion Fields from Tagged MRI.

Understanding the relationship between tongue motion patterns during speech and their resulting speech acoustic outcomes-i.e., articulatory-acoustic relation-is of great importance in assessing speech quality and developing innovative treatment and rehabilitative strategies. This is especially important when evaluating and detecting abnormal articulatory features in patients with speech-related disorders. In this work, we aim to develop a framework for detecting speech motion anomalies in conjunction with their corresponding speech acoustics. This is achieved through the use of a deep cross-modal translator trained on data from healthy individuals only, which bridges the gap between 4D motion fields obtained from tagged MRI and 2D spectrograms derived from speech acoustic data. The trained translator is used as an anomaly detector, by measuring the spectrogram reconstruction quality on healthy individuals or patients. In particular, the cross-modal translator is likely to yield limited generalization capabilities on patient data, which includes unseen out-of-distribution patterns and demonstrates subpar performance, when compared with healthy individuals. A one-class SVM is then used to distinguish the spectrograms of healthy individuals from those of patients. To validate our framework, we collected a total of 39 paired tagged MRI and speech waveforms, consisting of data from 36 healthy individuals and 3 tongue cancer patients. We used both 3D convolutional and transformer-based deep translation models, training them on the healthy training set and then applying them to both the healthy and patient testing sets. Our framework demonstrates a capability to detect abnormal patient data, thereby illustrating its potential in enhancing the understanding of the articulatory-acoustic relation for both healthy individuals and patients.

3D hot spot construction on the hydrophobic interface with SERS tags for quantitative detection of pesticide residues on food surface.

The overuse of pesticides results in excessive pesticide residues, posing a potential threat to human health. Herein, this work proposes a SERS substrate for the quantitative analysis of pesticide residues on food surfaces. Au cores are assembled on PS microspheres, followed by the modification of Raman internal standards (1,4-BDT) on the gold core surface and the growth of the Au shell. After incubating the analytes with PS@Au@1,4-BDT@Au particles, the mixture is dropped on the hydrophobic gold film for drying before detection. The SERS substrates exhibited high sensitivity and stability, with a detection limit of 10-12 M and an RSD of less than 7 %. Combined with a portable Raman spectrometer, the SERS detection of pesticide residues on three kinds of food surfaces is carried out, with a sensitivity of 10-11 M, meeting the US MRLs regulations. Therefore, this strategy may possess significant potential for future food safety.

The impact of empowerment theory-based health education on Alzheimer's disease informal caregivers: a randomized controlled trial.

Background: There is a lack of evidence regarding the effectiveness of empowerment healthy education for caregivers of Alzheimer's patients. Objective: To explore the effectiveness of the intervention of health education guided by empowerment theory on dementia knowledge, caregiving readiness, positive caregiving emotions, anxiety, and depression in informal Alzheimer's disease caregivers. Design: A single-blinded, randomized controlled trial. Setting: A teaching hospital in Tianjin, China. Participants: Eighty caregivers of Alzheimer's disease patients. Methods: Participants were recruited from the hospital and randomly assigned to either experimental or control group. The experimental group underwent a 12-weeks, one-to-one intervention of six session lasting 45-60 min each. The control group received conventional health education. Outcome measures included dementia knowledge, caregiver readiness (primary outcomes), positive caregiving emotions, anxiety, and depression (secondary outcomes). Results: After 12 weeks, the intervention group exhibited significantly higher levels of dementia knowledge, caregiver readiness, and positive caregiving emotions compared with the control group. Furthermore, levels of hospitalization-related anxiety and depression were lower in the intervention group. All study results of this study showed statistically significant differences (p < 0.05). Discussion: Empowerment theory-based health education appears to be an effective intervention for improving caregiver and readiness to care for caregivers of Alzheimer's disease individuals. The intervention may help reduce caregivers' anxiety and depression levels.

[Modified painless wheat-grain blistering moxibustion for allergic rhinitis of lung deficiency and cold attacking: a randomized controlled trial].

OBJECTIVE: To observe the clinical efficacy of modified painless wheat-grain blistering moxibustion for allergic rhinitis (AR) of lung deficiency and cold attacking, and to explore its effects on serum immunoglobulin E (IgE) and interleukin-10 (IL-10). METHODS: Ninety-eight patients of perennial AR with lung deficiency and cold attacking were randomly divided into an observation group (49 cases, 2 dropped out) and a control group (49 cases, 2 dropped out). The control group received mometasone furoate nasal spray treatment. The observation group received modified painless wheat-grain blistering moxibustion at bilateral Feishu (BL 13), Gaohuang (BL 43), Zusanli (ST 36), and Shenzhu (GV 12) in addition to the control group's treatment. Moxibustion at Shenzhu (GV 12) was applied once every other day, 3 grains each time, forming moxibustion sores after about one week. After sores formed, moxibustion was applied once every other 2 days. For Feishu (BL 13), Gaohuang (BL 43), and Zusanli (ST 36), moxibustion was applied on one side first, every other day, 3 grains each time, until sores formed, then on the other side, alternating sides in a cycle. Both groups were treated for 4 weeks. The total nasal symptoms score (TNSS), nasal symptom visual analogue scale (VAS), and rhinoconjunctivitis quality of life questionnaire (RQLQ) scores were observed before and after treatment, and after 4 and 12 weeks of treatment completion (follow-ups). Serum IgE and IL-10 levels were measured before and after treatment, and treatment efficacy and recurrence rates at follow-ups were recorded. RESULTS: Compared before treatment, TNSS, VAS, and RQLQ scores in both groups were reduced after treatment and at follow-ups (P<0.05), and these scores in the observation group were lower than those in the control group (P<0.05). Except for TNSS scores in the control group at the follow-ups, and in the observation group at the 4-week follow-up, all scores at follow-ups in both groups were higher than those after treatment (P<0.05). Compared before treatment, serum IgE levels in both groups were decreased (P<0.05), and serum IL-10 levels were increased (P<0.05) after treatment. The observation group had lower serum IgE levels and higher IL-10 levels than the control group (P<0.05). The total effective rate in the observation group was 93.6% (44/47), higher than 74.5% (35/47) in the control group (P<0.05). The recurrence rates after 4 and 12 weeks of treatment completion in the observation group were lower than those in the control group (4.5% [2/44] vs 22.9% [8/35], 9.1% [4/44] vs 40.0% [14/35], P<0.05). CONCLUSION: On the basis of mometasone furoate nasal spray, modified painless wheat-grain blistering moxibustion could improve clinical symptoms in patients of AR with lung deficiency and cold attacking, and provide more sustained long-term efficacy, possibly through the regulation of serum IgE and IL-10 levels.

Investigating muscle coordination patterns with Granger causality analysis in protrusive motion from tagged and diffusion MRI.

The human tongue exhibits an orchestrated arrangement of internal muscles, working in sequential order to execute tongue movements. Understanding the muscle coordination patterns involved in tongue protrusive motion is crucial for advancing knowledge of tongue structure and function. To achieve this, this work focuses on five muscles known to contribute to protrusive motion. Tagged and diffusion MRI data are collected for analysis of muscle fiber geometry and motion patterns. Lagrangian strain measurements are derived, and Granger causal analysis is carried out to assess predictive information among the muscles. Experimental results suggest sequential muscle coordination of protrusive motion among distinct muscle groups.

Base-Promoted Ring Expansion Reaction of 4-Quinolones To Access Benzazepinones.

4-Quinolone derivatives undergo an unexpected ring expansion reaction with α-halo esters/phosphonates/sulfones in the presence of a base, such as NaH, to produce novel benzazepinones. Under these mild and transition-metal-free conditions, most substrates gave moderate to excellent yields. The reaction could be applied in gram-scale synthesis of drug-like molecules that greatly accelerated our structure-activity relationship studies. A plausible mechanism was proposed.