The impact of "long COVID" on menstruation in Chinese female college students and the intervention of acupuncture.

This study aimed to explore the potential application value of acupuncture in alleviating the impact of long COVID on women's menstrual cycles, by investigating the occurrence of long COVID among female college students, its effects on menstruation, and the intervention of acupuncture. This cross-sectional study surveyed female college students with a history of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) before April 10, 2023. A questionnaire was used to analyze demographic characteristics, post-COVID sequelaes, duration of symptoms, and treatments received during that period. Among the 731 participants enrolled in the survey, 468 were female undergraduate students who met the analysis criteria. Among them, 85 individuals fit the definition of "Long COVID" (18.16%). Within the group of patients with long COVID, 69 individuals experienced changes in their overall menstrual patterns compared to the 6 months prior to contracting the novel coronavirus (81.18%). Additionally, 17 individuals opted for acupuncture treatment following the onset of COVID-19 (20.00%), which resulted in less impact on their menstrual cycle (41.18% vs 64.71% without receiving acupuncture, OR = 2.62), menstrual period duration (41.18% vs 64.71%, OR = 2.62), menstrual flow (47.06% vs 69.18%, OR = 2.52), and the color of menstrual blood (41.18% vs 63.24%, OR = 2.46) among these patients. Long COVID had a certain impact on menstruation. Acupuncture potentially alleviates the clinical symptoms of long COVID and reduces its impact on women's menstrual cycle, thus having potential therapeutic value in the treatment of long COVID.

Acupuncture for autophagy in animal models of middle cerebral artery occlusion: A systematic review and meta-analysis protocol.

INTRODUCTION: Ischemic stroke has high morbidity, disability and mortality rates. The effective treatments recommended by guideline have considerable limitations due to their strict range of adaptation and narrow time window. Acupuncture is an effective and safe treatment for ischemic stroke, and the mechanism may be related to autophagy. In this systematic review, we aim to summarize and evaluate the evidence of autophagy in acupuncture therapy for animal models of middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). METHODS: Publications will be retrieved from the MEDLINE, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, CNKI, CBM, CVIP and Wanfang databases. We will include animal experimental studies of acupuncture for MCAO, and the control group will receive placebo/sham acupuncture or no treatment after model establishment. Outcome measures must include autophagy and will include neurologic scores and/or infarct size. The Systematic Review Center for Laboratory animal Experimentation (SYRCLE) risk of bias tool will be used to assess the risk of bias. A meta-analysis will be performed if the included studies are sufficiently homogenous. Subgroup analyses will be conducted according to different intervention types and different types of outcomes. Sensitivity analyses will also performed to explore the heterogeneity and to assess the stability of the results. Publication bias will be assessed by funnel plots. The Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluation (GRADE) system will be applied to evaluate the quality of evidence in this systematic review. DISCUSSION: The results of this study may help to explain autophagy in acupuncture therapy for ischemic stroke. The limitation of this review is that all included studies will be retrieved from Chinese or English medical databases due to language barriers. REGISTRATION: We registered in PROSPERO on May 31, 2022. (https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=329917) (CRD42022329917).

Disturbed boundaries extraction in coal-grain overlap areas with high groundwater levels using UAV-based visible and multispectral imagery.

With high groundwater levels, coal-grain overlap areas (CGOAs) are vulnerable to subsidence and water logging during mining activities, thereby impacting crop yields adversely. Such damage requires full reports of disturbed boundaries for agricultural reimbursement and ongoing reclamation, but because direct measurements are difficult in such cases because of vast unreachable areas, it is necessary to be able to identify out-of-production boundaries (OBs) and reduced-production boundaries (RBs) in the corresponding region. In this study, an OB was extracted by setting a threshold via the characteristics of the cultivated-land elevation based on a digital surface model and a digital orthophoto map generated using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Meanwhile, the above-ground biomass (AGB), the soil plant analysis development (SPAD) value of chlorophyll contents, and leaf area index (LAI) were used to select the appropriate vegetation indices (VIs) to produce a reduced-production map (RM) based on power regression (PR), exponential regression (ER), multiple linear regression (MR), and random forest (RF) algorithms. Finally, an improved Otsu segmentation algorithm was used to extract mild and severe RBs. The results showed the following. (1) Crop growth heights in a typical ponding basin of the CGOA rendered a fast and efficient approach to distinguishing the OB. (2) In subsequent sample modeling, the red-edge microwave VI (MVIredge), the normalized difference VI (NDVI), and the red-edge modified simple ratio index (MSRredge) combined with RF were shown to be optimal estimators for AGB (R2 = 0.83, RMSE = 0.114 kg·m-2); the red-edge NDVI (NDVIredge), the green NDVI (GNDVI), and the red-edge chlorophyll index (CIredge) acted as strong tools in SPAD prediction using RF (R2 = 0.83, RMSE = 0.152 SPAD); the red-edge modified simple ratio index (MSRredge), the GNDVI, and the green chlorophyll index (CIgreen) via MR were more accurate when conducting the inversion of LAI (R2 = 0.88, RMSE = 1.070). (3) With the improved Otsu algorithm, multiple degrees of RB extraction can be achieved in RM. This study provides reference methods and theoretical support for determining disturbed boundaries in CGOAs with high groundwater levels for further agricultural compensation and reclamation processes.

GHz sampling hardware implementation with sub-Nyquist coprime sampling rates.

A sub-Nyquist coprime sampling system for sparse signals is implemented in this article. The proposed system is composed of coprime sampling hardware and a multicoset signal reconstruction algorithm. A pair of uniform samplers is utilized in the hardware to sample a wideband spare analog signal with an uncertain difference in start times. A time difference acquisition module embedded into a field-programmable gate array and a pulse-expanding circuit are then used to measure the difference in start times. Owing to the different frequencies of the two samplers, the coprime sample sets obtained are nonuniform. Before they are used as input to the multicoset signal reconstruction algorithm, these coprime sample sets need to be regrouped into multicoset sample sets according to the sample pattern. The results of experiments indicate that the signals can be reconstructed at an equivalent rate of the order of gigahertz from sub-Nyquist samples acquired by the designed coprime acquisition system.