Efficacy and safety of transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation for the management of primary dysmenorrhoea: Protocol for a randomised controlled trial in China

INTRODUCTION: Primary dysmenorrhoea (PD) is a common menstrual concern with significant physical and psychosocial impacts. The effectiveness and safety of transcutaneous electrical acupoint stimulation (TEAS) in alleviating PD symptoms remain uncertain due to insufficient evidence. This single-centre, parallel, randomised controlled study intends to evaluate the efficacy and safety of TEAS for PD management. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: 60 participants aged 18-40 years diagnosed with moderate to severe PD will be recruited from Tai\u27an Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and randomly assigned to either a TEAS group or a TEAS-sham group (1:1). The TEAS group will undergo 12 sessions of TEAS treatment over two menstrual cycles, with 30 min per session, three sessions weekly. Participants in the TEAS-sham group will receive TEAS stimulation using identical devices and protocols but without current output. The primary outcome is the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for pain assessment. Secondary outcomes are Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire, total effective rate, uterine artery haemodynamics, prostaglandin and β-endorphin level, mental well-being and quality of life. Adverse events and their potential reasons and the use of analgesics will also be recorded. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Tai\u27an Hospital of TCM. Written informed consent will be obtained from each participant. The results will be submitted for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ChiCTR2300071686

Emergent topological ordered phase for the Ising-XY Model revealed by cluster-updating Monte-Carlo method

The two-component cold atom systems with anisotropic hopping amplitudes can be phenomenologically described by a two-dimensional Ising-XY coupled model with spatial anisotropy. At low temperatures, theoretical predictions [Phys. Rev. A 72, 053604 (2005)] and [arXiv:0706.1609] indicate the existence of a topological ordered phase characterized by Ising and XY disorder but with 2XY ordering. However, due to ergodic difficulties faced by Monte Carlo methods at low temperatures, this topological phase has not been numerically explored. We propose a linear cluster updating Monte Carlo method, which flips spins without rejection in the anisotropy limit but does not change the energy. Using this scheme and conventional Monte Carlo methods, we succeed in revealing the nature of topological phases with half-vortices and domain walls. In the constructed global phase diagram, Ising and XY type transitions are very close to each other and differ significantly from the schematic phase diagram reported earlier. We also propose and explore a wide range of quantities, including magnetism, superfluidity, specific heat, susceptibility, and even percolation susceptibility, and obtain consistent results. Furthermore, we observe first-order transitions characterized by common intersection points in magnetizations for different system sizes, as opposed to the conventional phase transition where Binder cumulants of various sizes share common intersections. The results are useful to help cold atom experiments explore the half-vortex topological phase.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures. Accepted by Chinese Physics

Herder Mental Stocking Rate in the Rangeland Regions of Northern China

In 2002, the Chinese government issued the “balancing animals and grass” policy to control the degradation problem of northern China, but these programs have been widely resisted by herders. We proposed that herder had their mental stocking rate, which refers to the number of animals that the herders think they can place or maintain on a piece of rangeland over a specified period of time. It is the mental stocking rate that guides herder on how to adjust livestock-breeding practices. This study surveyed herder opinion of grass-animal balance in the meadow steppe, typical steppe and desert steppe regions of northern China. Most herders admitted that they bred more livestock than ten years ago, whereas they insisted that there was no overstocking in their rangelands and more than half even thought that their rangelands could still carry more livestock when the policy was implemented. Most herders hold that they took into account the carrying capacity of rangelands when making decisions about stock-breeding practices. Herders from three regions nominated the following mental stocking rates; 0.75-1.50, 0.60-1.50, and 0.50-0.75 sheep/ha, insisting these rates were necessary and reasonable

Recent advances of antioxidant low-dimensional carbon materials for biomedical applications

As the primary cause of many tissue damage and diseases, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and reactive nitrogen species (RNS) are well known to be extremely harmful to a variety of biological components in cells including lipids, proteins and DNA. Numerous antioxidative nanomaterials have been artificially designed and rationally synthesized to protect cells from the oxidative damage caused by reactive oxygen species/reactive nitrogen species. Recent studies demonstrate that low dimensional carbon antioxidative nanomaterials have received a lot of attention owing to their tiny nanoscales and unique physicochemical property. As a result, a brief overview of recent advancements in antioxidant low-dimensional carbon materials is provided. Typically, carbon nanomaterials are classified according to their nanostructure dimensions, which are zero-dimension, one-dimension, and two-dimension. Last but not least, the challenges and perspectives of these high-performance low-dimensional materials in biomedical fields and further clinical usages are discussed as well

Exceptional nexus in Bose-Einstein condensates with collective dissipation

In multistate non-Hermitian systems, higher-order exceptional points and exotic phenomena with no analogues in two-level systems arise. A paradigm is the exceptional nexus (EX), a third-order EP as the cusp singularity of exceptional arcs (EAs), that has a hybrid topological nature. Using atomic Bose-Einstein condensates to implement a dissipative three-state system, we experimentally realize an EX within a two-parameter space, despite the absence of symmetry. The engineered dissipation exhibits density dependence due to the collective atomic response to resonant light. Based on extensive analysis of the system's decay dynamics, we demonstrate the formation of an EX from the coalescence of two EAs with distinct geometries. These structures arise from the different roles played by dissipation in the strong coupling limit and quantum Zeno regime. Our work paves the way for exploring higher-order exceptional physics in the many-body setting of ultracold atoms.Comment: accepted by PR

Effects of Protein Corona on IAPP Amyloid Aggregation, Fibril Remodelling, and Cytotoxicity

Aggregation of islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP), a peptide hormone co-synthesized and co-stored with insulin in pancreatic cells and also co-secreted to the circulation, is associated with beta-cell death in type-2 diabetes (T2D). In T2D patients IAPP is found aggregating in the extracellular space of the islets of Langerhans. Although the physiological environments of these intra- and extra-cellular compartments and vascular systems significantly differ, the presence of proteins is ubiquitous but the effects of protein binding on IAPP aggregation are largely unknown. Here we examined the binding of freshly-dissolved IAPP as well as pre-formed fibrils with two homologous proteins, namely cationic lysozyme (Lys) and anionic alpha-lactalbumin (aLac), both of which can be found in the circulation. Biophysical characterizations and a cell viability assay revealed distinct effects of Lys and aLac on IAPP amyloid aggregation, fibril remodelling and cytotoxicity, pointing to the role of protein “corona” in conferring the biological impact of amyloidogenic peptides. Systematic molecular dynamics simulations further provided molecular and structural details for the observed differential effects of proteins on IAPP amyloidosis. This study facilitates our understanding of the fate and transformation of IAPP in vivo, which are expected to have consequential bearings on IAPP glycemic control and T2D pathology

Effects of Protein Corona on IAPP Amyloid Aggregation, Fibril Remodelling, and Cytotoxicity

Aggregation of islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP), a peptide hormone co-synthesized and co-stored with insulin in pancreatic cells and also co-secreted to the circulation, is associated with beta-cell death in type-2 diabetes (T2D). In T2D patients IAPP is found aggregating in the extracellular space of the islets of Langerhans. Although the physiological environments of these intra- and extra-cellular compartments and vascular systems significantly differ, the presence of proteins is ubiquitous but the effects of protein binding on IAPP aggregation are largely unknown. Here we examined the binding of freshly-dissolved IAPP as well as pre-formed fibrils with two homologous proteins, namely cationic lysozyme (Lys) and anionic alpha-lactalbumin (aLac), both of which can be found in the circulation. Biophysical characterizations and a cell viability assay revealed distinct effects of Lys and aLac on IAPP amyloid aggregation, fibril remodelling and cytotoxicity, pointing to the role of protein “corona” in conferring the biological impact of amyloidogenic peptides. Systematic molecular dynamics simulations further provided molecular and structural details for the observed differential effects of proteins on IAPP amyloidosis. This study facilitates our understanding of the fate and transformation of IAPP in vivo, which are expected to have consequential bearings on IAPP glycemic control and T2D pathology

A BrLINE1-RUP insertion in BrCER2 alters cuticular wax biosynthesis in Chinese cabbage (Brassica rapa L. ssp. pekinensis)

Glossiness is an important quality-related trait of Chinese cabbage, which is a leafy vegetable crop in the family Brassicaceae. The glossy trait is caused by abnormal cuticular wax accumulation. In this study, on the basis of a bulked segregant analysis coupled with next-generation sequencing (BSA-seq) and fine-mapping, the most likely candidate gene responsible for the glossy phenotype of Chinese cabbage was identified. It was subsequently named Brcer2 because it is homologous to AtCER2 (At4g24510). A bioinformatics analysis indicated a long interspersed nuclear element 1 (LINE-1) transposable element (named BrLINE1-RUP) was inserted into the first exon of Brcer2 in HN19-G via an insertion-mediated deletion mechanism, which introduced a premature termination codon. Gene expression analysis showed that the InDel mutation of BrCER2 reduced the transcriptional expression levels of Brcer2 in HN19-G. An analysis of cuticular waxes suggested that a loss-of-function mutation to BrCER2 in Chinese cabbage leads to a severe decrease in the abundance of very-long-chain-fatty-acids (> C28), resulting in the production of a cauline leaf, inflorescence stem, flower, and pistil with a glossy phenotype. These findings imply the insertion of the LINE-1 transposable element BrLINE1-RUP into BrCER2 can modulate the waxy traits of Chinese cabbage plants