Blood-nourishing and Hard-softening Capsule Costs Less in the Management of Osteoarthritic Knee Pain: A Randomized Controlled Trial

The blood-nourishing and hard-softening (BNHS) capsule is a traditional Chinese formula used in the symptomatic treatment of inflammation and pain. We conducted this randomized controlled trial to compare the efficacy of BNHS with other commonly prescribed drugs. We recruited 120 patients from two teaching hospitals; 30 patients in each hospital were randomly assigned to receive BNHS. In one hospital, the 30 controls were given another traditional Chinese drug; whereas a Western medicine (chondroprotection drug/Viartril-s) was used as the control in the other hospital. Intervention was carried out over a period of 4 weeks. Primary outcome measures included self-reported pain level, and changes in stiffness and functional ability as measured by the Western Ontario McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis (WOMAC) index. Mixed models were used for statistical analysis. Substantial improvements in disease-specific symptoms were observed, after 4 weeks of treatment, in patients taking BNHS capsules. As assessed by the WOMAC index, pain level of the BNHS group decreased by 57% [95% confidence interval (CI) = 50, 63], stiffness by 63% (95% CI = 55, 71) and functional ability increased by 56% (95% CI = 50, 63). No significant differences were found in any of the outcome measures between the BNHS group and either of the comparison groups. No severe adverse effects were reported. However, this study lacked a placebo group; therefore, we conclude that BNHS appears to be as effective as commonly prescribed medicines for the relief of pain and dysfunction in knee osteoarthritis patients, but costs a lot less than other Western and herbal drugs in the study

(±)-Peniorthoesters A and B, Two Pairs of Novel Spiro-Orthoester en-antiomers With an Unusual 1,4,6-Trioxaspi-ro[4.5]decane-7-One Unit From Penicillium minioluteum

(±)-Peniorthoesters A and B (±1 and ±2), two pairs of unprecedented spiro-orthoester enantiomers with a 1,4,6-trioxaspiro[4. 5]decane-7-one unit, were obtained from Penicillium minioluteum. Their structures were determined by spectroscopic methods, X-ray diffraction analyses, and ECD calculations. (±)-Peniorthoesters A and B are the first examples of spiro-orthoester enantiomers, and they represent the first spiro-orthoesters originating from fungi. All compounds showed potential inhibitory activities comparable to dexamethasone against NO production with IC50 values ranging from 14.2 to 34.5 μM

FURTHER RELAXATIONS OF THE SEMIDEFINITE PROGRAMMING APPROACH TO SENSOR NETWORK LOCALIZATION

Recently, a semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation approach has been proposed to solve the sensor network localization problem. Although it achieves high accuracy in estimating the sensor locations, the speed of the SDP approach is not satisfactory for practical applications. In this paper we propose methods to further relax the SDP relaxation, more precisely, to relax the single semidefinite matrix cone into a set of small-size semidefinite submatrix cones, which we call a sub-SDP (SSDP) approach. We present two such relaxations. Although they are weaker than the original SDP relaxation, they retain the key theoretical property, and numerical experiments show that they are both efficient and accurate. The speed of the SSDP is even faster than that of other approaches based on weaker relaxations. The SSDP approach may also pave a way to efficiently solving general SDP problems without sacrificing the solution quality

Income Growth, Urbanization, and Food Demand in China

A complete demand system is estimated separately for urban and rural residents using a two-stage AIDS-QUAIDS model and pooled provincial and time-series data from 2000 to 2010. The estimated models are then used to project China’s rural and urban food demand in the future. Results suggest that with the continued rise in per capita income and urbanization rate, the budget shares of food grains and vegetables are expected to decrease while the shares of foods with animal origin and other high-valued foods are expected to rise. Moreover, urban residents will dominate the food demand in China

Further relaxations of the SDP approach to sensor network localization

Recently, a semi-definite programming (SDP) relaxation approach has been proposed to solve the sensor network localization problem. Although it achieves high accuracy in estimating sensor’s locations, the speed of the SDP approach is not satisfactory for practical applications. In this paper we propose methods to further relax the SDP relaxation; more precisely, to relax the single semi-definite matrix cone into a set of small-size semidefinite matrix cones, which we call the smaller SDP (SSDP) approach. We present two such relaxations; and they are, although weaker than the original SDP relaxation, retaining the key theoretical property and tested to be both efficient and accurate in computation. The speed of the SSDP is even faster than that of other further weaker approaches. The SSDP approach may also pave a way to efficiently solve general SDP relaxations without sacrificing their solution quality

Metabonomic-Transcriptome Integration Analysis on Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis

Purpose. This study is aimed at exploring the potential metabolite/gene biomarkers, as well as the differences between the molecular mechanisms, of osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods. Transcriptome dataset GSE100786 was downloaded to explore the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between OA samples and RA samples. Meanwhile, metabolomic dataset MTBLS564 was downloaded and preprocessed to obtain metabolites. Then, the principal component analysis (PCA) and linear models were used to reveal DEG-metabolite relations. Finally, metabolic pathway enrichment analysis was performed to investigate the differences between the molecular mechanisms of OA and RA. Results. A total of 976 DEGs and 171 metabolites were explored between OA samples and RA samples. The PCA and linear module analysis investigated 186 DEG-metabolite interactions including Glycogenin 1- (GYG1-) asparagine_54, hedgehog acyltransferase- (HHAT-) glucose_70, and TNF receptor-associated factor 3- (TRAF3-) acetoacetate_35. Finally, the KEGG pathway analysis showed that these metabolites were mainly enriched in pathways like gap junction, phagosome, NF-kappa B, and IL-17 pathway. Conclusions. Genes such as HHAT, GYG1, and TRAF3, as well as metabolites including glucose, asparagine, and acetoacetate, might be implicated in the pathogenesis of OA and RA. Metabolites like ethanol and tyrosine might participate differentially in OA and RA progression via the gap junction pathway and phagosome pathway, respectively. TRAF3-acetoacetate interaction may be involved in regulating inflammation in OA and RA by the NF-kappa B and IL-17 pathway

Total 3D Understanding: Joint Layout, Object Pose and Mesh Reconstruction for Indoor Scenes from a Single Image

Semantic reconstruction of indoor scenes refers to both scene understanding and object reconstruction. Existing works either address one part of this problem or focus on independent objects. In this paper, we bridge the gap between understanding and reconstruction, and propose an end-to-end solution to jointly reconstruct room layout, object bounding boxes and meshes from a single image. Instead of separately resolving scene understanding and object reconstruction, our method builds upon a holistic scene context and proposes a coarse-to-fine hierarchy with three components: 1. room layout with camera pose; 2. 3D object bounding boxes; 3. object meshes. We argue that understanding the context of each component can assist the task of parsing the others, which enables joint understanding and reconstruction. The experiments on the SUN RGBD and Pix3D datasets demonstrate that our method consistently outperforms existing methods in indoor layout estimation, 3D object detection and mesh reconstruction