Efficacy of Addiction Pharmacotherapy in Alcohol Use Disorder and Their Effects on Liver Health

Both alcohol-associated liver disease (ALD) and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease are leading contributors to chronic liver diseases. These conditions often coexist, exacerbating disease progression. Despite ALD be-ing a leading cause of liver transplantation, many individuals with alcohol use disorder (AUD) do not receive treatment. In this review, we discussed the epidemiology of ALD in AUD, various treatment options for AUD, and their efficacy on liver health. Our critical analysis of current evidence underscores the need for integrated models involving multiple stakehold-ers to improve ALD management.</p

Time-aware Metapath Feature Augmentation for Ponzi Detection in Ethereum

With the development of Web 3.0 which emphasizes decentralization, blockchain technology ushers in its revolution and also brings numerous challenges, particularly in the field of cryptocurrency. Recently, a large number of criminal behaviors continuously emerge on blockchain, such as Ponzi schemes and phishing scams, which severely endanger decentralized finance. Existing graph-based abnormal behavior detection methods on blockchain usually focus on constructing homogeneous transaction graphs without distinguishing the heterogeneity of nodes and edges, resulting in partial loss of transaction pattern information. Although existing heterogeneous modeling methods can depict richer information through metapaths, the extracted metapaths generally neglect temporal dependencies between entities and do not reflect real behavior. In this paper, we introduce Time-aware Metapath Feature Augmentation (TMFAug) as a plug-and-play module to capture the real metapath-based transaction patterns during Ponzi scheme detection on Ethereum. The proposed module can be adaptively combined with existing graph-based Ponzi detection methods. Extensive experimental results show that our TMFAug can help existing Ponzi detection methods achieve significant performance improvements on the Ethereum dataset, indicating the effectiveness of heterogeneous temporal information for Ponzi scheme detection.Comment: Accepted by IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineerin

Based on the Integration of “Internet + Ideology and Politics”, the Practice of Online and Offline Mixed Teaching Mode of Modern Medical Courses in Traditional Chinese Medicine Majors

The purpose of this paper is to explore how to implement the online and offline mixed teaching mode in the modern medical courses of TCM specialty under the guidance of the concept of “Internet + ideological and political integration”, and to explore its practical experience and remarkable results. With the power of today’s Internet technology, we will organically integrate ideological and political education into the modern medicine course of traditional Chinese medicine, so as to effectively promote the overall cultivation of students’ comprehensive quality, and further enhance the attraction of the course and educational benefits

Die "Harmonische Welt" und Chinas Rolle im internationalen System: aus chinesischen Fachzeitschriften der Jahre 2006-2008

Im Jahr 2005 rief der chinesische Staatspräsident Hu Jintao bei einer Rede anlässlich des 60. Jahrestages der Gründung der Vereinten Nationen erstmals zum Aufbau einer »Harmonischen Welt« auf. Diese zeichnet sich laut Hu durch dauerhaften Frieden und gemeinsamen Wohlstand aus. Die Außenpolitik, die China im Rahmen seiner derzeitigen »friedlichen Entwicklung« zur Großmacht verfolge, stehe im Zeichen von Frieden, Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit. Der auf die traditionelle konfuzianische Lehre zurückgeführte Begriff Harmonie hat sich in den letzten Jahren zu einem Modewort in der chinesischen Politik entwickelt: So ist die Rede vom Aufbau einer »Harmonischen Gesellschaft« im Inland, von einer »Harmonischen Asien-Pazifik-Region« oder vom »Harmonischen Nahen Osten«. Dabei fehlt es dem Begriff jedoch an einer scharfen Kontur und klaren Bedeutung. (Autorenreferat

Polyphenol-stabilized coacervates for enzyme-triggered drug delivery.

Stability issues in membrane-free coacervates have been addressed with coating strategies, but these approaches often compromise the permeability of the coacervate. Here we report a facile approach to maintain both stability and permeability using tannic acid and then demonstrate the value of this approach in enzyme-triggered drug release. First, we develop size-tunable coacervates via self-assembly of heparin glycosaminoglycan with tyrosine and arginine-based peptides. A thrombin-recognition site within the peptide building block results in heparin release upon thrombin proteolysis. Notably, polyphenols are integrated within the nano-coacervates to improve stability in biofluids. Phenolic crosslinking at the liquid-liquid interface enables nano-coacervates to maintain exceptional structural integrity across various environments. We discover a pivotal polyphenol threshold for preserving enzymatic activity alongside enhanced stability. The disassembly rate of the nano-coacervates increases as a function of thrombin activity, thus preventing a coagulation cascade. This polyphenol-based approach not only improves stability but also opens the way for applications in biomedicine, protease sensing, and bio-responsive drug delivery

Quantitative detection of circulating MT-ND1 as a potential biomarker for colorectal cancer

Liquid biopsy represents a diagnostic and monitoring tool and the circulating cell-free mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) plays a vital role in tumor diagnosis and dynamic assessment. Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common fatal cancers worldwide. Mitochondrially encoded NADH dehydrogenase subunit 1 (MT-ND1) encodes the biggest subunit of respiratory complex I of mtDNA, and mutations in the MT-ND1 are common in CRC. We sought to determine if mutations in circulating MT-ND1 could be a potential biomarker for colorectal cancer. In this study, twenty-two CRC patients at Zhujiang Hospital were included. We mainly used droplet digital PCR to determine the mutation status of MT-ND1, combined with clinical data. In the experiment in vivo, cell-free mtDNA generally presented high concordance with tumor tissues. By quantitative PCR, the MT-ND1 content of plasma in CRC patients was significantly higher than that in healthy individuals (58.01 vs. 0.64, p=0.027). The detection of circulating MT-ND1 content and variants (m.3606 A>G, m.3970 C>T, m.4071 C>T, m.4086 C>T) in cfDNA showed a good correlation with predicted tumor response and progression to chemotherapy. In conclusion, the content and variants of circulating MT-ND1 may become a versatile tool for the diagnosis and monitoring of colorectal cancer

Goldilocks Energy Minimum: Peptide-Based Reversible Aggregation and Biosensing

Colorimetric biosensors based on gold nanoparticle (AuNP) aggregation are often challenged by matrix interference in biofluids, poor specificity, and limited utility with clinical samples. Here, we propose a peptide-driven nanoscale disassembly approach, where AuNP aggregates induced by electrostatic attractions are dissociated in response to proteolytic cleavage. Initially, citrate-coated AuNPs were assembled via a short cationic peptide (RRK) and characterized by experiments and simulations. The dissociation peptides were then used to reversibly dissociate the AuNP aggregates as a function of target protease detection, i.e., main protease (Mpro), a biomarker for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2. The dissociation propensity depends on peptide length, hydrophilicity, charge, and ligand architecture. Finally, our dissociation strategy provides a rapid and distinct optical signal through Mpro cleavage with a detection limit of 12.3 nM in saliva. Our dissociation peptide effectively dissociates plasmonic assemblies in diverse matrices including 100% human saliva, urine, plasma, and seawater, as well as other types of plasmonic nanoparticles such as silver. Our peptide-enabled dissociation platform provides a simple, matrix-insensitive, and versatile method for protease sensing