Data mining on varieties, therapeutic uses and medicinal characteristics of Traditional Chinese Medicine preparations for treating hair loss

Purpose: To review the varieties, therapeutic uses, and medicinal characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) preparations for treating hair loss, and to provide a reference for research and development of new drugs.Methods: For this review, literature from the last 50 years pertaining to the treatment of hair loss via TCM were collected mainly from China National Knowledge Infrastructure database and Wanfang Data Resource System database. Information on Chinese traditional patent medicines and ethnomedicines for treating hair loss was drawn from books.Results: A total of 322 preparations were identified, including 135 preparations made by medical institutions, 108 Chinese traditional patent medicines, 60 preparations produced by doctors themselves, and 19 ethnomedicines. The forms of dosage included  decoctions, pills, capsules, tablets, granules, tinctures, liniments, and powders. These preparations are traditionally used in the treatment of skin and subcutaneous tissue diseases. A total of 400 medicinal materials were used in preparations, including 339 from plants, 40 from animals, 14 from minerals. The most commonly used Chinese medicinal materials in order of frequency were Rehmannia glutinosa (Gaertn.) DC., Fallopia multiflora (Thunb.) Haraldson, Angelica sinensis (Oliv.) Diels, Ligustrum lucidum W.T. Aiton and Ligusticum chuanxiong Hort.Conclusion: TCM preparations for treating hair loss are abundant in variety. They are mainly decoctions, and primarily botanical medicinal materials. Most of the preparations are composed of Chinese medicinal materials for ‘toning the kidneys’ and ‘nourishing the liver’. They are used mainly in the treatment of seborrheic alopecia and alopecia areat

Current Rehabilitation Therapies in Parkinson’s Disease

Rehabilitation is one of the important non-pharmacological interventions for Parkinson’s disease (PD). At the time of diagnosis, an appropriate exercise regimen can be prescribed based on the patient’s symptoms. Rehabilitative therapies should be continued throughout the disease course. This chapter summarized the standard specifications and research progression on PD from perspectives of assessment and treatment of rehabilitation. The physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech-language therapy, and neuromodulation therapy are the focus of the introduction. Accurate and comprehensive functional assessment is the premise of rehabilitation plan. Various approaches are used individually or in combined targeted at one or more dysfunction. Although there is still no consensus about the optimal approach about intensity, the frequency of treatment sessions, and complexity, rehabilitation is proved to be able to induce short-term, but clinically important benefits, particularly for gait and balance. The rehabilitative program for PD should be targeted to practicing and learning specific activities in the core areas and be tailored to the individual patients’ characteristics. In addition to improving patient’s performance, environmental modification and alleviation of caregivers are also included in rehabilitation intervention. Innovative techniques have been recently proposed: virtual reality and exergaming, motor imagery and action observation, robot-assisted physiotherapy, and nonconventional therapies

Composite Hydrogel Microspheres Encapsulating Hollow Mesoporous Imprinted Nanoparticles for Selective Capture and Separation of 2′-Deoxyadenosine

Hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles have been widely applied as a carrier material in the molecular imprinting process because of their excellent properties, with high specific surface area and well-defined active centers. However, these kinds of materials face the inevitable problem that they have low mass transfer efficiency and cannot be conveniently recycled. In order to solve this problem, this work has developed a composite hydrogel microsphere (MMHSG) encapsulated with hollow mesoporous imprinted nanoparticles for the selective extraction of 2’-deoxyadenosine (dA). Subsequently, the hollow mesoporous imprinted polymers using dA as template molecule and synthesized 5-(2-carbomethoxyvinyl)-2′-deoxyuridine (AcrU) as functional monomer were encapsulated in hydrogel. MMHSG displayed good performance in specifically recognizing and quickly separating dA, whereas no imprinting effect was observed among 2′-deoxyguanosine (dG), deoxycytidine (dC), or 5′-monophosphate disodium salt (AMP). Moreover, the adsorption of dA by MMHSG followed chemisorption and could reach adsorption equilibrium within 60 min; the saturation adsorption capacity was 20.22 μmol·g−1. The introduction of AcrU could improve selectivity through base complementary pairing to greatly increase the imprinting factor to 3.79. Therefore, this was a successful attempt to combine a hydrogel with hollow mesoporous silica nanoparticles and molecularly imprinted material

GLFormer: An Efficient Transformer Network for Fast Magnetic Resonance Imaging Reconstruction

Deep learning (DL)-based methods substantially enhance the speed of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Recently, transformer network architectures have been increasingly applied to image reconstruction owing to their exceptional ability to model long-range dependencies. However, directly employing a transformer network for MRI reconstruction results in a considerable computational burden because the computational complexity of the transformer is proportional to the square of the image spatial resolution. To alleviate this limitation, this study aims to design a computationally efficient transformer network with improved reconstruction performance. The proposed network, termed the global-local-transformer (GLFormer), is based on a multi-input multi-output architecture consisting of three components. A simplified self-attention, global attention is designed to extract the long-range dependency using a global pooling operator while maintaining linear complexity. Furthermore, depth convolution is incorporated into a feedforward network (FFN) to perform local feature aggregation, and a parallel-gated branch is designed for the FFN, thereby enhancing the effectiveness of representation learning and improving the reconstruction performance. To enhance the ability of the network to perceive frequency information, a deep frequency attention module is proposed to adaptively decompose and adjust frequency domain features, thereby enhancing the reconstruction performance. Experiments conducted on public datasets indicate that GLFormer outperforms state-of-the-art DL-based methods for different undersampling rates and types of undersampling patterns. Furthermore, GLFormer only exploits fewer model parameters and has a lower computational burden (i.e., 2.4 M and 19G) than the previous methods, while maintaining high reconstruction quality

Mechanical behavior of HTS coils in high field magnets based on the electromechanical coupling

International audienceWith the increase of both current-carrying capability and mechanical performance, 2G HTS tape is gradually becoming the dominant materials in the high field magnet. HTS coil co-wound by the REBCO coated conductor and insulated material is the insert coils, while the LTS coils usually provide a high background field. Both LTS coils and HTS coils together contribute to a high central magnetic field to meet the design requirements. However, due to the shielding current effect in coated conductor, the central field contributed by the HTS coils deviates from the design field. Moreover, HTS coils in normal operation would withstand the large electromagnetic force. Under the combined effect of electromagnetic force and thermal strain, the coated conductor may experience a large deformation. Investigations of the electro-mechanical characteristics in REBCO coated conductor is vital as the large strain in superconducting layer would cause the degradation of critical current. Thus, 2D electro- mechanical coupling numerical model is adopted, in which the Ic degradation caused by the strain is taken into account. The profiles of magnetic field and current density in HTS coils are presented for the cases with and without the electro- mechanical coupling effect. Then, the effect of shielding current on the distributions of magnetic field in HTS coils is discussed. The profiles of stress and strain of HTS coils in high field are calculated. The maximum stresses in the coil for different cases are also analyz

Mechanical behavior of HTS coils in high field magnets based on the electromechanical coupling

International audienceWith the increase of both current-carrying capability and mechanical performance, 2G HTS tape is gradually becoming the dominant materials in the high field magnet. HTS coil co-wound by the REBCO coated conductor and insulated material is the insert coils, while the LTS coils usually provide a high background field. Both LTS coils and HTS coils together contribute to a high central magnetic field to meet the design requirements. However, due to the shielding current effect in coated conductor, the central field contributed by the HTS coils deviates from the design field. Moreover, HTS coils in normal operation would withstand the large electromagnetic force. Under the combined effect of electromagnetic force and thermal strain, the coated conductor may experience a large deformation. Investigations of the electro-mechanical characteristics in REBCO coated conductor is vital as the large strain in superconducting layer would cause the degradation of critical current. Thus, 2D electro- mechanical coupling numerical model is adopted, in which the Ic degradation caused by the strain is taken into account. The profiles of magnetic field and current density in HTS coils are presented for the cases with and without the electro- mechanical coupling effect. Then, the effect of shielding current on the distributions of magnetic field in HTS coils is discussed. The profiles of stress and strain of HTS coils in high field are calculated. The maximum stresses in the coil for different cases are also analyz

Identification and characterization of MAVS from black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus

MAVS (mitochondria antiviral signaling protein) plays an important role in the host cellular innate immune response against microbial pathogens. In this study, MAVS has been cloned and characterized from black carp (Mylopharyngodon piceus). The full-length cDNA of black carp MAVS (bcMAVS) consists of 2352 nucleotides and the predicted bcMAVS protein contains 579 amino acids. Structural analysis showed that bcMAVS is composed of functional domains including an N-terminal CARD, a central proline-rich domain, a putative TRAF2-binding motif and a C-terminal TM domain, which is similar to mammalian MAVS. bcMAVS is constitutively transcribed in all the selected tissues including gill, kidney, heart, intestine, liver, muscle, skin and spleen; bcMAVS mRNA level in intestine, liver, muscle increased but decreased in spleen right after GCRV or SVCV infection. Multiple bands of bcMAVS were detected in western blot when it was expressed in tissue culture, which is similar to mammalian MAVS. Immunofluorescence assay determined that bcMAVS is a mitochondria protein and luciferase reporter assay demonstrated that bcMAVS could induce zebrafish IFN and EPC IFN expression in tissue culture. Data generated in this manuscript has built a solid foundation for further elucidating the function of bcMAVS in the innate immune system of black carp. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Identification of a Novel N7-Methylguanosine-Related LncRNA Signature Predicts the Prognosis of Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Experiment Verification

(1) Background: It is well-known that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and N7-methylguanosine (m7G) contribute to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) progression. However, it remains unclear whether lncRNAs regulating m7G modification could predict HCC prognosis. Thus, we sought to explore the prognostic implications of m7G-related lncRNAs in HCC patients. (2) Methods: Prognostic M7G-related lncRNAs obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database were screened by co-expression analysis and univariate Cox regression analysis. Next, the m7G-related lncRNA signature (m7GRLSig) was conducted by Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression and multivariate Cox regression analysis. Kaplan–Meier analysis and time-dependent receiver operating characteristics (ROC) assessed the prognostic abilities of our signature. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression, nomogram, and principal component analysis (PCA) were conducted to evaluate our signature. Subsequently, we investigated the role of m7GRLSig on the immune landscape and sensitivity to drugs in HCC patients. The potential function of lncRNAs obtained from the prognostic signature was explored by in vitro experiments. (3) Results: A novel m7GRLSig was identified using seven meaningful lncRNA (ZFPM2-AS1, AC092171.2, PIK3CD-AS2, NRAV, CASC19, HPN-AS1, AC022613.1). The m7GLPSig exhibited worse survival in the high-risk group and served as an independent prognostic factor. The m7GRLSig stratification was sensitive in assessing the immune landscape and sensitivity to drugs between the high-risk and low-risk groups. Finally, in vitro experiments confirmed that the knockdown of NRAV was accompanied by the downregulation of METTL1 during HCC progression. (4) Conclusions: The m7G-related signature is a potential predictor of HCC prognosis and contributes to individualize the effective drug treatment of HCC

<p>Hybrid hydrogel microspheres loading single-hole hollow imprinted particles for fast and selective uptake of 2'& nbsp;-deoxyadenosine</p>

Hydrogel microspheres encapsulating molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are promising hybrid sorbents, due to several advantages of high selectivity, fast mass transfer efficiency, and simple collection. Thus, Janus single hole hollow nanoparticles (J-HNPs) with the size of 550 +/-& nbsp; 70 nm were firstly designed by anisotropic emulsion template, and then MIPs were grafted onto their inner surface through electron transfer atom transfer radical polymerization (ARGET ATRP). Then as-prepared J-HNPs-MIPs were loaded into hydrogel microspheres via polymerizable water-in-oil (W/O) emulsion droplets combining gelatin methacryloyl (GMA) as monomers, and then obtained J-HNPs-MIPs@Gel with the mean diameter of 2.0 mu m was applied for effective and selective separation of 2'-deoxyadenosine (dA). Fast adsorption equilibrium of J-HNPs-MIPs@Gel for dA can be achieved within 40 min, thanks to the hydrogel matrix and single-hole hollow structure for enhancing diffusion. The maximum multi-layer adsorption capacity calculated according to the Freundlich model was 10.31 mu mol g(-1) at 298 K. The specific memory to the size, shape and functional groups of dA endowed excellent recognition ability, and 88% of the initial capacity after four consecutive adsorption-desorption cycles was maintained. In addition, J-HNPs-MIPs@Gel was expected to show great potential for the selective enrichment and analysis of target dA molecule in complex biological samples