Acupuncture improves the residual urine volume of bladder of middle age patients with urinary retention post-stroke: A protocol for systematic review and meta analysis.

BACKGROUND: There are 15 million new cases of stroke every year in the world, 65% of which have dysuria in the early stage of stroke, which seriously affects the quality of life of stroke patients. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the results of randomized controlled trials to determine whether acupuncture can improve the residual urine volume of the bladder in middle age patients with urinary retention post-stroke. METHODS: Eight databases, including China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Scientific Journal Database, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed, Wanfang Database, and Web of Science, will be searched using English and Chinese search strategies. In addition, manual retrieval of research papers, conference papers, ongoing experiments, internal reports, etc, will supplement electronic retrieval. All eligible studies published on or before October 1, 2022 will be selected. To enhance the effectiveness of the study, only clinical randomized controlled trials related to the use of manual acupuncture for the treatment of urinary retention post-stroke will be included. CONCLUSION: The residual urine volume of bladder will be the primary outcome measure, whereas the Clinical efficiency will be the secondary outcomes. Side effects and adverse events will be included as safety evaluations. To ensure the quality of the systematic evaluation, study selection, data extraction, and quality assessment will be independently performed by two authors, whereas a third author will resolve any disagreement.

Efficacy and safety of manual acupuncture for the treatment of upper limb motor dysfunction after stroke: Protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION: The incidence of stroke sequelae among patients is as high as 70%-80%. Flexor spasm is the most common stroke sequela, presenting a heavy burden to the patients and their families. This study will evaluate the results of randomized controlled trials to determine the efficacy and safety of hand manipulation acupuncture for the treatment of upper limb motor dysfunction after stroke. METHODS: Eight databases, including China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Chinese Scientific Journal Database, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Embase, MEDLINE, PubMed, Wanfang Database, and Web of Science, will be searched using English and Chinese search strategies. In addition, manual retrieval of research papers, conference papers, ongoing experiments, and internal reports, among others, will supplement electronic retrieval. All eligible studies published on or before January 15, 2021 will be selected. To enhance the effectiveness of the study, only clinical randomized controlled trials related to the use of manual acupuncture for the treatment of upper limb motor dysfunction after stroke will be included. ANALYSIS: The Fugl-Meyer upper extremity assessment will be the primary outcome measure, whereas the Wolf Motor Function Test, Modified Ashworth Scale, arm movement survey test table, and upper extremity freehand muscle strength assessment scores will be the secondary outcomes. Side effects and adverse events will be included as safety evaluations. To ensure the quality of the systematic evaluation, study selection, data extraction, and quality assessment will be independently performed by two authors, and a third author will resolve any disagreement. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This systematic review will evaluate the efficacy and safety of manual acupuncture for the treatment of upper limb motor dysfunction after stroke. Since all included data will be obtained from published articles, it does not require ethical approval and will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. INPLASY registration number: INPLASY202110071.

A Hyperspectral Bidirectional Reflectance Model for Land Surface.

A hyperspectral bidirectional reflectance (HSBR) model for land surface has been developed in this work. The HSBR model includes a very diverse land surface bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) database with ~40,000 spectra. The BRDF database is saved as Ross-Li parameters, which can generate hyperspectral reflectance spectra at different sensor and solar observation geometries. The HSBR model also provides an improved method for generating hyperspectral surface reflectance using multiband satellite measurements. It is shown that the land surface reflective spectrum can be easily simulated using BRDF parameters or reflectance at few preselected wavelengths. The HSBR model is validated using the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) vegetation database and the AVIRIS reflectance product. The simulated reflective spectra fit the measurements very well with standard deviations normally smaller than 0.01 in the unit of reflectivity. The HSBR model could be used to significantly improve the quality of the reflectance products of satellite and airborne sensors. It also plays important role for intercalibration among space-based instruments and other land surface related applications.

Spectrally Dependent CLARREO Infrared Spectrometer Calibration Requirement for Climate Change Detection.

Detecting climate trends of atmospheric temperature, moisture, cloud, and surface temperature requires accurately calibrated satellite instruments such as the Climate Absolute Radiance and Reflectivity Observatory (CLARREO). Wielicki et al. have studied the CLARREO measurement requirements for achieving climate change accuracy goals in orbit. Our study further quantifies the spectrally dependent IR instrument calibration requirement for detecting trends of atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles. The temperature, water vapor, and surface skin temperature variability and the associated correlation time are derived using Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) reanalysis data. The results are further validated using climate model simulation results. With the derived natural variability as the reference, the calibration requirement is established by carrying out a simulation study for CLARREO observations of various atmospheric states under all-sky. We derive a 0.04 K (k=2, or 95% confidence) radiometric calibration requirement baseline using a spectral fingerprinting method. We also demonstrate that the requirement is spectrally dependent and some spectral regions can be relaxed due to the hyperspectral nature of the CLARREO instrument. We further discuss relaxing the requirement to 0.06 K (k=2) based on the uncertainties associated with the temperature and water vapor natural variability and relatively small delay in time-to-detect for trends relative to the baseline case. The methodology used in this study can be extended to other parameters (such as clouds and CO2) and other instrument configurations.

Development of a fast and accurate PCRTM radiative transfer model in the solar spectral region.

A fast and accurate principal component-based radiative transfer model in the solar spectral region (PCRTM-SOLAR) has been developed. The algorithm is capable of simulating reflected solar spectra in both clear sky and cloudy atmospheric conditions. Multiple scattering of the solar beam by the multilayer clouds and aerosols are calculated using a discrete ordinate radiative transfer scheme. The PCRTM-SOLAR model can be trained to simulate top-of-atmosphere radiance or reflectance spectra with spectral resolution ranging from 1 cm-1 resolution to a few nanometers. Broadband radiances or reflectance can also be calculated if desired. The current version of the PCRTM-SOLAR covers a spectral range from 300 to 2500 nm. The model is valid for solar zenith angles ranging from 0 to 80 deg, the instrument view zenith angles ranging from 0 to 70 deg, and the relative azimuthal angles ranging from 0 to 360 deg. Depending on the number of spectral channels, the speed of the current version of PCRTM-SOLAR is a few hundred to over one thousand times faster than the medium speed correlated-k option MODTRAN5. The absolute RMS error in channel radiance is smaller than 10-3 mW/cm2/sr/cm-1 and the relative error is typically less than 0.2%.

Fast and accurate hybrid stream PCRTM-SOLAR radiative transfer model for reflected solar spectrum simulation in the cloudy atmosphere.

A hybrid stream PCRTM-SOLAR model has been proposed for fast and accurate radiative transfer simulation. It calculates the reflected solar (RS) radiances with a fast coarse way and then, with the help of a pre-saved matrix, transforms the results to obtain the desired high accurate RS spectrum. The methodology has been demonstrated with the hybrid stream discrete ordinate (HSDO) radiative transfer (RT) model. The HSDO method calculates the monochromatic radiances using a 4-stream discrete ordinate method, where only a small number of monochromatic radiances are simulated with both 4-stream and a larger N-stream (N ≥ 16)discrete ordinate RT algorithm. The accuracy of the obtained channel radiance is comparable to the result from N-stream moderate resolution atmospheric transmission version 5 (MODTRAN5). The root-mean-square errors are usually less than 5x 10-4 mW/cm2/sr/cm-1. The computational speed is three to four-orders of magnitude faster than the medium speed correlated-k option MODTRAN5. This method is very efficient to simulate thousands of RS spectra under multi-layer clouds/aerosols and solar radiation conditions for climate change study and numerical weather prediction applications.

Optical nonlinearities of Au nanoparticles and Au/Ag coreshells.

Au nanoparticles exhibited both negative and positive nonlinear absorptions with ground-state plasmon bleaching and free-carrier absorption that could be origins of the saturable and reverse-saturable optical properties. Au/Ag coreshells displayed only positive nonlinear absorption and reverse-saturable optical properties as a function of excitation intensity at the edge of surface-plasmon resonance, which implies no ground-state plasmon bleaching and the existence of two-photon absorption.

Spatial beam shaping of ultrashort laser pulses: theory and experiment.

We studied the spatial intensity profile of an ultrashort laser pulse passing through a laser beam shaping system, which uses diffractive optical elements to reshape a Gaussian beam profile into a flat-topped distribution. Both dispersion and nonlinear self-phase modulation are included in the theoretical model. Our calculation shows that this system works well for ultrashort pulses (approximately 100 fs) when the pulse peak intensity is less than 5 x 10(11) W/cm2. Experimental results are presented for 136 fs pulses at 800 nm wavelength from a Ti:sapphire laser with a 6 nJ pulse energy. We also studied the effects of lateral misalignment, beam-size deviation, and defocusing on the energy fluence profile.

Slow light and superluminality in Kerr media without a pump.

Subluminal and superluminal propagation of a light pulse in Kerr materials has been investigated. Group velocities as slow as much less than 1 mm per second to as fast as negative several thousands meters per second can easily be obtained in the Kerr medium, which possesses a large nonlinear refractive index and long relaxation time, such as Cr3+-doped alexandrite, ruby, and GdAlO3. The physical mechanism is the strong highly dispersive coupling between different frequency components of the pulse.