Cortical Reorganization in Patients Recovered from Bell's Palsy: An Orofacial and Finger Movements Task-State fMRI Study

Objective. To explore cortical reorganization of patients recovered from Bell's palsy (BP) by task-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during finger and orofacial movements and provide more evidence for acupuncture clinical treatment of BP. Methods. We collected 17 BP patients with complete clinical recovery (BP group) and 20 healthy volunteers (control group) accepted the task-state fMRI scans with lip pursing movements and finger movements, respectively. Results. It was found that there were significant differences of brain functional status between the two groups. Conclusions. The results showed that there was cortical reorganization in the brain of patients recovered from BP after acupuncture treatment, which also suggested the relationship between the hand motor areas and facial motor areas of BP patients

Joint Optimization of a Dry Port with Multilevel Location and Container Transportation: The Case of Northeast China

Dry port construction can reduce the cost of container transportation, and its location is the focus of existing research. Considering dry port capacity limitations and scale advantages, this study calculates the costs associated with dry port construction and operations, transportation, time, and the environment and constructs a joint optimization model of the dry port location and transportation scheme to minimize the total cost. Taking 35 prefecture-level cities in Northeast China as the source of container goods and Dalian port as the destination, this study conducts an empirical analysis using the Gurobi 9.0.2 optimizer of the AMPL software to solve the problem and takes the minimum total cost as the goal to select the best dry port and container transshipment scheme. The research draws the following conclusions. Seven dry ports also need to be built in the road-rail (RD-RL) mode, which shares 82.76% of the container transshipment volume, to reduce the total transportation cost by approximately 21.67%. Although multimodal transport through dry ports increases the time cost slightly, it can significantly reduce the economic and environmental costs of container transportation

The Full-Term Delivery of a Normal Female Infant by a Woman with a Levonorgestrel Intrauterine System in Situ and Identified as Having Uterine Adenomyosis: A Case Report

Abstract This study reports an IVF patient who had adenomyosis underwent 2 in vitro fertilization (IVF) cycles and 3 frozen embryo transfer (FET) cycles but all failed. Then a Levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine system (LNG-IUS) was inserted into her uterine. When her next menstrual period did not occur, the patient performed a urinary pregnancy test and it was positive. The pregnancy progressed normally and the delivery was uncomplicated. An elective Caesarean delivery was performed at 39 weeks gestation. The IUD was found in the placenta and the postpartum recovery was uneventful. This is the first report of a woman, who having been identified with uterine adenomyosis, delivered a normal female infant with an LNG-IUS in situ. This case report indicated that LNG-IUS may play some roles in changing the uterine environment of adenomyosis

Higher Risk of Anxiety and Depression in Women with Adenomyosis as Compared with Those with Uterine Leiomyoma

The main symptoms of adenomyosis may adversely affect physical and mental health and quality of life (QOL). However, studies are few on this topic. This study evaluated the effect of adenomyosis on anxiety, depression, and QOL. Participants with adenomyosis (n = 90) or leiomyoma (n = 59) completed questionnaires, including the visual analog scale (VAS) for pain, Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), and Short Form (SF)-36. HADS anxiety and depression positive rates, physical (PCS) and mental (MCS) component summary scores, and eight subscale scores of SF-36 were compared between the two groups. Among patients with adenomyosis, the incidence of anxiety symptoms was 28.9% (control group, 10.2%; OR = 3.589, 95% CI: 1.375–9.367), with 10% of patients showing moderate-to-severe symptoms. The incidence of depressive symptoms was 14.4% (control group, 3.4%; OR = 4.812, 95% CI: 1.044–22.168). The case group had significantly lower PCS and MCS scores than the control group. In patients with adenomyosis, being employed (OR = 6.393, 95% CI: 1.153–35.440) and perianal pain (OR = 25.419, 95% CI: 2.504–258.024) were risk factors for anxiety, and perianal pain (OR = 15.208, 95% CI: 3.050–75.836) was a risk factor for depression. Compared with leiomyoma, adenomyosis is associated with a higher risk of anxiety and depression, with a poorer QOL

Design, Analysis, and Experiment for Rescue Robot with Wheel-Legged Structure

A wheel-legged rescue robot design with strong environmental adaptability is proposed. The design presented is aimed at helping rescue workers complete their missions, such as environmental and personnel search, quickly and accurately. So it has broad application prospects. In order to achieve the advantages of simple structure, easy control, small occupation space, and wide motion range, a wheel-legged rescue robot is designed in this paper, and the robot can realize three kinds of motion states, which include wheel state, rotation center lifting process, and leg state. Then the motion states are analyzed in detail, which provides a reference for motion control. Considering the wheel state and leg state share the same structure to contact with the ground, the effect of the stiffness of wheel-legged structure to the motion performance is analyzed. Then the experiment is carried out to prove the feasibility of the structure design. This study offers a design and quantitative analysis for wheel-legged rescue robot. Furthermore, a basis for future control research and engineering applications is established

Functional Connectivity Modulation by Acupuncture in Patients with Bell’s Palsy

Bell’s palsy (BP), an acute unilateral facial paralysis, is frequently treated with acupuncture in many countries. However, the mechanism of treatment is not clear so far. In order to explore the potential mechanism, 22 healthy volunteers and 17 BP patients with different clinical duration were recruited. The resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scans were conducted before and after acupuncture at LI4 (Hegu), respectively. By comparing BP-induced functional connectivity (FC) changes with acupuncture-induced FC changes in the patients, the abnormal increased FC that could be reduced by acupuncture was selected. The FC strength of the selected FC at various stages was analyzed subsequently. Our results show that FC modulation of acupuncture is specific and consistent with the tendency of recovery. Therefore, we propose that FC modulation by acupuncture may be beneficial to recovery from the disease

Cortical Reorganization in Patients Recovered from Bell’s Palsy: An Orofacial and Finger Movements Task-State fMRI Study

Objective. To explore cortical reorganization of patients recovered from Bell’s palsy (BP) by task-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during finger and orofacial movements and provide more evidence for acupuncture clinical treatment of BP. Methods. We collected 17 BP patients with complete clinical recovery (BP group) and 20 healthy volunteers (control group) accepted the task-state fMRI scans with lip pursing movements and finger movements, respectively. Results. It was found that there were significant differences of brain functional status between the two groups. Conclusions. The results showed that there was cortical reorganization in the brain of patients recovered from BP after acupuncture treatment, which also suggested the relationship between the hand motor areas and facial motor areas of BP patients

Brain Morphological and Functional Changes in Adenomyosis with Pain: A Resting State Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

The absence of clinically objective methods to evaluate adenomyosis-associated pain and the poor understanding of its pathophysiology lead to treatment limitations. We conducted a resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study with 49 patients with pain-related adenomyosis and 30 pain-free controls to investigate brain morphological alterations and regional dysfunctions in patients with pain-related adenomyosis. These patients had significantly higher scores for anxiety and depression than the control group (p p p < 0.05, AlphaSim corrected). Regional homogeneity showed significant differences mainly in the bilateral cerebellum, left inferior frontal gyrus, medial prefrontal cortex, and posterior cingulate gyrus. Correlation analysis showed that the degree of depression in patients with adenomyosis was negatively correlated with the GMV of the left angular gyrus. The results show that these patients exhibited changes in multiple brain regions associated with pain as well as emotion perception and processing

Diffusion-Limited Accepter Alloy Enables Highly Efficient and Stable Organic Solar Cells

Organic solar cells (OSCs) are designed based on a blend of polymer donor and small molecular acceptor whereby the thermodynamic relaxation of the morphology raises the concerns related to operational stability. Herein, it is demonstrated that the classical Y6-based binary device can be stabilized by using its derivative of ZCCF3 as the third component, which is designed with the replacing of the thiadiazole group on Y6 with the trifluoromethyl substituted diazepine unit. ZCCF3 delivers not only higher glass transition temperature (T-g) than Y6 but also have hyper-miscibility with Y6, contributing to a favorable diffusion-limited Y6:ZCCF3 alloy when blended with polymer donor. Consequently, a champion power conversion efficiency of 18.54% is achieved in the optimal PM6: Y6: ZCCF3 devices, which can retain their 80% initial efficiency of up to 360 h. This study highlights the importance of high T-g of the third component and its derived hyper-miscible accepter alloys in achieving highly efficient and stable OSCs

Human Y Chromosome Base-Substitution Mutation Rate Measured by Direct Sequencing in a Deep-Rooting Pedigree

Understanding the key process of human mutation is important for many aspects of medical genetics and human evolution. In the past, estimates of mutation rates have generally been inferred from phenotypic observations or comparisons of homologous sequences among closely related species [1–3]. Here, we apply new sequencing technology to measure directly one mutation rate, that of base substitutions on the human Y chromosome. The Y chromosomes of two individuals separated by 13 generations were flow sorted and sequenced by Illumina (Solexa) paired-end sequencing to an average depth of 11× or 20×, respectively [4]. Candidate mutations were further examined by capillary sequencing in cell-line and blood DNA from the donors and additional family members. Twelve mutations were confirmed in ∼10.15 Mb; eight of these had occurred in vitro and four in vivo. The latter could be placed in different positions on the pedigree and led to a mutation-rate measurement of 3.0 × 10−8 mutations/nucleotide/generation (95% CI: 8.9 × 10−9–7.0 × 10−8), consistent with estimates of 2.3 × 10−8–6.3 × 10−8 mutations/nucleotide/generation for the same Y-chromosomal region from published human-chimpanzee comparisons [5] depending on the generation and split times assumed