Synergistic effect of lecithin and alginate, CMC, or PVP in stabilizing curcumin and its potential mechanism.

This work aims to advance the understanding of the synergistic mechanism of lecithin and polymers (alginate, CMC, and PVP) in stabilizing curcumin, with a major focus on understanding the nanocomplex formation process and the main binding energy between molecules. It is demonstrated that lecithin and polymers have a synergistic effect in increasing the thermal acid, light, and digestion stability of curcumin. The potential mechanism is that the hydrophobic parts of curcumin molecules are first anchored at the region of the hydrophobic cavity of lecithin by van der Waals, while the hydrophilic parts are outward and are further encapsulated by hydrophilic polymers by van der Waals and electrostatic interaction to form a protective shell. This study contributes to our understanding of the synergistic mechanism of lecithin, polymers, and hydrophobic compounds, which can promote the synergistic use of lecithin and polymers to prepare nanocomplexes as an important tool for delivering bioactive compounds.

Patterns of mental health problems before and after easing COVID-19 restrictions: Evidence from a 105248-subject survey in general population in China.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has alarming implications for individual and population level mental health. Although the future of COVID-19 is unknown at present, more countries or regions start to ease restrictions. The findings from this study have provided the empirical evidence of prevalence and patterns of mental disorders in Chinese general population before and after easing most COVID-19 restrictions, and information of the factors associated with these patterns. METHODS: A cross-sectional population-based online survey was carried out from February to March 2020 in the general population across all provinces in China. The 12-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-12) was incorporated in the survey. Latent class analyses were performed to investigate the patterns of mental disorders and multinomial logistic regressions were used to examine how individual and regional risk factors can predict mental disorder patterns. RESULTS: Four distinctive patterns of mental health were revealed in the general population. After the ease of most COVID-19 restrictions, the prevalence of high risk of mental disorders decreased from 25.8% to 20.9% and prevalence of being high risk of unhappiness and loss of confidence decreased from 10.1% to 8.1%. However, the prevalence of stressed, social dysfunction and unhappy were consistently high before and after easing restrictions. Several regional factors, such as case mortality rate and healthcare resources, were associated with mental health status. Of note, healthcare workers were less likely to have mental disorders, compared to other professionals and students. CONCLUSIONS: The dynamic management of mental health and psychosocial well-being is as important as that of physical health both before and after the ease of COVID-19 restrictions. Our findings may help in mental health interventions in other countries and regions while easing COVID-19 restrictions.

Analysis of the Relationship between Scintillation Parameters, Multipath and ROTI.

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) operation can be affected by several environmental factors, of which ionospheric scintillation is one of the most significant. Scintillation is usually characterized by two indices, namely the amplitude scintillation index (S4) and phase scintillation index (σφ). However, these two indices can only be generated by specialized GNSS receivers, which are not widely available all around the world. To popularize the study of scintillation, this article proposes to use more accessible parameters, namely multipath (MP) and rate of change of total electron content index (ROTI), to characterize scintillation. Using GPS data obtained on six days in total from three stations, namely PRU2 and SAO0P located in Sao Paulo, Brazil and SNA0P located in Antarctica, respectively, both the time series plots and 2D maps were generated to investigate the relationship of scintillation indices (S4 and σφ) with MP and ROTI. To prevent the effect of the real multipath error, a 30-degree satellite elevation mask is applied to all the data. As the scintillation indices S4 and σφ have a sampling interval of 1 min, MP and ROTI are calculated with the same sampling interval for a more direct comparison. The results show that the structural similarity (SSIM) and correlation coefficient (CC) between parameters was greater than 0.7 for 70% of outputs. In addition, the variogram and cross-variogram are applied to investigate the spatial structure of the MP, ROTI, S4 and σφ in order to support the results of SSIM and CC. With outputs in three forms, promising spatial and temporal relationships between parameters was observed.