Effect of a combination of donepezil tablets and butylphthalide soft capsules on neurological function in dementia patients, and its effect on serum inflammatory factors

Purpose: To determine the effect of combined use of donepezil tablets and butylphthalide soft capsules in the treatment of patients with vascular dementia, and its effect on serum inflammatory factor levels and neurological functional recovery of patients.Methods: 120 patients with vascular dementia were selected and assigned to group A (n = 60) and group B (n = 60). All patients were treated with donepezil tablets, while patients in group A were, in addition, treated with butylphthalide soft capsules. Mini mental state examination (MMSE) scores, clinical dementia rating scale (CDRS) scores, activities of daily living (ADL) scores, incidence of adverse reactions, serum inflammatory factor levels and neurological functional recovery were determined.Results: There was significantly higher MMSE score in group A than in B, while CDRS score was lower in group A. The ADL scores and inflammatory factor levels were lower in group A than in B (p < 0.001), while neurological functional recovery was markedly better in A (p < 0.001). Incidents of unwanted events were comparable in groups A and B, and there were no serious complications in the patients.Conclusion: The combination therapy of donepezil tablets and butylphthalide soft capsules reduces inflammatory factor levels and improved cognitive level and quality of life of patients with vascular dementia. It also produces good neurological functional recovery and low incidence of adverse reactions. Therefore, this treatment strategy has potentials for the management of vascular dementia

Convective Transport Characteristics of Nanofluids in Light- Weight Metal Foams with High Porosity

Metal foams can be well used as ideal materials for various efficient heat transfer devices due to light weight, high specific, and high thermal conductivity. Nanofluids have higher thermal conductivities than traditional fluid, so it can be used as an efficient heat transfer characteristics medium. This paper focuses on heat transfer of nanofluid, metal foam and the combination of the two. The physical properties of nanofluid and metal foam are summarized. The characteristics of flow and heat transfer are introduced. This work creates a close connection between scientific research and practical applications of this dual heat transfer enhancement method

The G285S mutation in nsP1 is sufficient to render Sindbis virus as a stable vector for gene delivery

Neuroscience, gene therapy, and vaccine have all benefited from the increased use of viral vectors. Sindbis virus (SINV) is a notable candidate among these vectors. However, viral vectors commonly suffer from a loss of expression of the transgene, especially RNA viral vectors. In this study, we used a directed evolution approach by continuous passage of selection to identify adaptive mutations that help SINV to stably express exogenous genes. As a result, we found two adaptive mutations that are located at aa 285 (G to S) of nsP1 and aa 422 (D to G) of nsP2, respectively. Further study showed that G285S was sufficient for SINV to stabilize the expression of the inserted gene, while D422G was not. Combined with AlphaFold2 and sequence alignment with the genus Alphavirus, we found that G285S is conserved. Based on this mutation, we constructed a new vector for the applications in neural circuits mapping. Our results indicated that the mutant SINV maintained its anterograde transsynaptic transmission property. In addition, when the transgene was replaced by another gene, granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF), the vector still showed stable expression of the inserted gene. Hence, using SINV as an example, we have demonstrated an efficient approach to greatly augment the gene delivery capacity of viral vectors, which will be useful to neuroscience and oncolytic therapy

Spectra and radial flow at RHIC with Tsallis statistics in a Blast-Wave description

We have implemented the Tsallis statistics in a Blast-Wave model and applied it to mid-rapidity transverse-momentum spectra of identified particles measured at RHIC. This new Tsallis Blast-Wave function fits the RHIC data very well for $p_T<$3 GeV/$c$. We observed that the collective flow velocity starts from zero in p+p and peripheral Au+Au collisions growing to 0.470 $\pm$ 0.009($c$) in central Au+Au collisions. The $(q-1)$ parameter, which characterizes the degree of non-equilibrium in a system, changes from $0.100\pm0.003$ in p+p to $0.015\pm0.005$ in central Au+Au collisions, indicating an evolution from a highly non-equilibrated system in p+p collisions toward an almost thermalized system in central Au+Au collisions. The temperature and collective velocity are well described by a quadratic dependence on $(q-1)$. Two sets of parameters in our Tsallis Blast-Wave model are required to describe the meson and baryon groups separately in p+p collisions while one set of parameters appears to fit all spectra in central Au+Au collisions.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures; update text and reference

Collective Excitation in High-Energy Nuclear Collisions -- In Memory of Professor Lianshou Liu

We celebrate the legacies of our friend and mentor Professor Lianshou Liu who was one of the pioneers for the phenomenology of multi-particle interactions and initiated the physics of relativistic heavy-ion collisions in China. In this article, we discuss some of the recent exciting experimental observations on the collective phenomena including collectivity, chirality, criticality, strangeness production, and thermal equilibrium in high-energy nuclear collisions. Future directions, especially the physics at high baryon density, will be discussed with a focus on the first-order phase boundary and hyperon-nucleon interactions.Comment: 20 pages, 10 figure