Effectiveness and safety of Xingbei Zhike granules in patients with postinfectious cough: A multicenter, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Postinfectious cough (PIC) is a common symptom following a respiratory tract infection. Xingbei Zhike (XBZK) granules, a Chinese patent medicine, has been widely used for PIC in clinics. However, there is a lack of evidence on the effectiveness. PURPOSE: To investigate whether treatment with XBZK granules is effective for PIC. STUDY DESIGN: A multicenter, randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial. METHODS: Eligible participants from fourteen hospitals were randomly assigned in 3:1 ratio to receive either XBZK granules or placebo for 14 days. The primary outcome was the area under the curve (AUC) of a visual analogue scale (VAS) for cough symptoms. Secondary outcomes included cough symptom score (CSS), time and probability of recovery from cough, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndrome score, relief rates of individual symptoms, Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ) score, and the use of reliever drug. RESULTS: A total of 235 patients (176 in XBZK and 59 in placebo groups) were included in the analysis. The AUC for cough VAS scores was lower in the XBZK than placebo group (-8.10, 95 % CI -14.12 to -2.07, p = 0.009), indicating superiority. XBZK decreased CSS (-0.68 points, 95 % CI -1.13 to -0.22, p = 0.01), shortened time to cough recovery (-2 days, hazard ratio [HR] 1.48, 95 % CI 1.03 to 2.13, p = 0.02), enhanced the probability of cough recovery (risk ratio [RR] 1.66, 95 % CI 1.07 to 2.58, p = 0.03), lowered TCM syndrome score (-0.99 points, 95 % CI -1.58 to -0.40, p = 0.004), increased the rate of daytime (RR 1.84, 95 % CI 1.07 to 3.15, p = 0.02) and nighttime (RR 2.07, 95 % CI 1.29 to 3.35, p = 0.004) cough recovery, and reduced the viscosity of sputum (RR 2.92, 95 % CI 1.66 to 5.13, p < 0.001) compared to placebo. There were no significant differences in LCQ scores and taking reliever drugs between groups. No severe adverse events were reported in either group. CONCLUSIONS: XBZK granules are a promising therapy against PIC, effective in lowering the overall severity of cough, shortening the time to cough recovery, and reducing the viscosity of sputum.

Structure Design of Quadrilateral Overlapped Wireless Power Transmission Coupling Coil.

The application of wireless power transmission technology is becoming more and more extensive. However, in practical applications, the problem of reducing the energy transmission efficiency caused by the offset of the coupling coil needs to be solved urgently. Changing the coil structure is a widely adopted method to deal with this problem. Based on the characteristics of the existing magnetic coupling resonant wireless power transmission system and the principle of the anti-offset coil, this paper innovatively designs a new type of quadrilateral overlapping wireless power transfer coupling coil, which has a strong anti-offset capability. The new type of coil model was built in the simulation and experiment, and the relevant parameters were measured. Experimental results verify that the proposed coil structure has an excellent anti-offset capability.

A Matching Algorithm for Underwater Acoustic and Optical Images Based on Image Attribute Transfer and Local Features.

In the field of underwater vision, image matching between the main two sensors (sonar and optical camera) has always been a challenging problem. The independent imaging mechanism of the two determines the modalities of the image, and the local features of the images under various modalities are significantly different, which makes the general matching method based on the optical image invalid. In order to make full use of underwater acoustic and optical images, and promote the development of multisensor information fusion (MSIF) technology, this letter proposes to apply an image attribute transfer algorithm and advanced local feature descriptor to solve the problem of underwater acousto-optic image matching. We utilize real and simulated underwater images for testing; experimental results show that our proposed method could effectively preprocess these multimodal images to obtain an accurate matching result, thus providing a new solution for the underwater multisensor image matching task.