Sino-European Transcontinental Basic and Clinical High-Tech Acupuncture Studies—Part 1: Auricular Acupuncture Increases Heart Rate Variability in Anesthetized Rats

Evidence-based research concerning the effects of high-tech acupuncture on autonomic function was performed by two research teams from China and Austria. This study describes the first transcontinental teleacupuncture measurements in animals. Heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV) recordings in 10 male Sprague-Dawley anesthetized rats were performed under stable conditions in Beijing, China, and the data analysis was completed in Graz, Austria. The electrocardiograms (ECGs) were recorded by an HRV Medilog AR12 system during acupuncture of the ear and body (PC6 Neiguan, CV12 Zhongwan, ST36 Zusanli). The data were analyzed using specially adapted novel Austrian software. HR did not change significantly during any acupuncture stimulation in anesthetized rats (ear acupuncture, PC6, CV12, or ST36). Total HRV only changed significantly (P = 0.025) during auricular acupuncture (acupoint heart). The low-frequency/high-frequency ratio parameter decreased significantly (P = 0.03) during stimulation of ST36. This change was based on intensification of the related mechanism of blood pressure regulation that has been demonstrated in previous studies in humans. Modernization of acupuncture research performed as a collaboration between China and Austria has also been demonstrated

The Effects of Scraping Therapy on Local Temperature and Blood Perfusion Volume in Healthy Subjects

Objective. We aim to study the therapeutic effects of scraping by investigating the changes of temperature and local blood perfusion volume in healthy subjects after scraping stimulation, and to explore the mechanism of scraping stimulation from the points of microcirculation and energy metabolism. Methods. Twenty-three health subjects were included in this study. Local blood perfusion volume and body surface temperature was detected at 5 min before scraping stimulation, 0, 15, 30, 60 and 90 min after scraping using Laser Doppler imager and infrared thermograph. Results. Significant increase was noted in the blood perfusion volume in the scraping area within 90 minutes compared to the baseline level and non-scraping area (P < 0.001). Compared with non-scraping area, an increase of body temperature with an average of 1°C was observed after scraping stimulation (P < 0.01). Conclusion. Scraping can significantly improve the blood perfusion volume and increase the temperature in the scraping area, promoting the local blood circulation and energy metabolism

(4RS)-3-Benzyl 5-methyl 2,6-dimethyl-4-(4-nitro­phen­yl)-1,4-dihydro­pyridine-3,5-dicarboxyl­ate

In the title compound, C23H22N2O6, the crystal packing is stabilized by inter­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, which link the mol­ecules into chains running parallel to the c axis. Inter­molecular C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds are also present in the structure

Transcriptional up-regulation of relaxin-3 by Nur77 attenuates β-adrenergic agonist-induced apoptosis in cardiomyocytes.

The relaxin family peptides have been shown to exert several beneficial effects on the heart, including anti-apoptosis, anti-fibrosis, and anti-hypertrophy activity. Understanding their regulation might provide new opportunities for therapeutic interventions, but the molecular mechanism(s) coordinating relaxin expression in the heart remain largely obscured. Previous work demonstrated a role for the orphan nuclear receptor Nur77 in regulating cardiomyocyte apoptosis. We therefore investigated Nur77 in the hopes of identifying novel relaxin regulators. Quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) data indicated that ectopic expression of orphan nuclear receptor Nur77 markedly increased the expression of latexin-3 (RLN3), but not relaxin-1 (RLN1), in neonatal rat ventricular cardiomyocytes (NRVMs). Furthermore, we found that the -adrenergic agonist isoproterenol (ISO) markedly stimulated RLN3 expression, and this stimulation was significantly attenuated in Nur77 knockdown cardiomyocytes and Nur77 knockout hearts. We showed that Nur77 significantly increased RLN3 promoter activity via specific binding to the RLN3 promoter, as demonstrated by electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA) and chromatin immuno-precipitation (ChIP) assays. Furthermore, we found that Nur77 overexpression potently inhibited ISO-induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis, whereas this protective effect was significantly attenuated in RLN3 knockdown cardiomyocytes, suggesting that Nur77-induced RLN3 expression is an important mediator for the suppression of cardiomyocyte apoptosis. These findings show that Nur77 regulates RLN3 expression, therefore suppressing apoptosis in the heart, and suggest that activation of Nur77 may represent a useful therapeutic strategy for inhibition of cardiac fibrosis and heart failure. © 2018 You et al

Brain-Modulated Effects of Auricular Acupressure on the Regulation of Autonomic Function in Healthy Volunteers

Auricular acupuncture has been described in ancient China as well as Egypt, Greece, and Rome. At the end of the 1950s, ear acupuncture was further developed by the French physician Dr. Paul Nogier. The goal of this study was to develop a new system for ear acupressure (vibration stimulation) and to perform pilot investigations on the possible acute effects of vibration and manual ear acupressure on heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), pulse wave velocity (PWV), and the augmentation index (AIx) using new noninvasive recording methods. Investigations were performed in 14 healthy volunteers (mean age ± SD: 26.3 ± 4.3 years; 9 females, 5 males) before, during, and after acupressure vibration and manual acupressure stimulation at the “heart” auricular acupuncture point. The results showed a significant decrease in HR (P ≤ 0.001) and a significant increase in HRV total (P = 0.008) after manual ear acupressure. The PWV decreased markedly (yet insignificantly) whereas the AIx increased immediately after both methods of stimulation. The increase in the low-frequency band of HRV was mainly based on the intensification of the related mechanism of blood pressure regulation (10-s-rhythm). Further studies in Beijing using animal models and investigations in Graz using human subjects are already in progress

AST:Adaptive Self-supervised Transformer for optical remote sensing representation

Due to the variation in spatial resolution and the diversity of object scales, the interpretation of optical remote sensing images is extremely challenging. Deep learning has become the mainstream solution to interpret such complex scenes. However, the explosion of deep learning model architectures has resulted in the need for hundreds of millions of remote sensing images for which labels are very costly or often unavailable publicly. This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the main reasons for this data thirst, i.e., (i) limited representational power for model learning, and (ii) underutilization of unlabeled remote sensing data. To overcome the above difficulties, we present a scalable and adaptive self-supervised Transformer (AST) for optical remote sensing image interpretation. By performing masked image modeling in pre-training, the proposed AST releases the rich supervision signals in massive unlabeled remote sensing data and learns useful multi-scale semantics. Specifically, a cross-scale Transformer architecture is designed to collaboratively learn global dependencies and local details by introducing a pyramid structure, to facilitate multi-granular feature interactions and generate scale-invariant representations. Furthermore, a masking token strategy relying on correlation mapping is proposed to achieve adaptive masking of partial patches without affecting key structures, which enhances the understanding of visually important regions. Extensive experiments on various optical remote sensing interpretation tasks show that AST has good generalization capability and competitiveness.</p

Peptide-fluorescent bacteria complex as luminescent reagents for cancer diagnosis

Currently in clinic, people use hematoxylin and eosin stain (H&amp;E stain) and immunohistochemistry methods to identify the generation and genre of cancers for human pathological samples. Since these methods are inaccurate and time consuming, developing a rapid and accurate method to detect cancer is urgently demanded. In our study, binding peptides for lung cancer cell line A549 were identified using bacteria surface display method. With those binding peptides for A549 cells on the surface, the fluorescent bacteria (Escherichia coli with stably expressed green fluorescent protein) were served as specific detecting reagents for the diagnosis of cancers. The binding activity of peptide-fluorescent bacteria complex was confirmed by detached cancer cells, attached cancer cells and mice tumor xenograft samples. A unique fixation method was developed for peptide-bacteria complex in order to make this complex more feasible for the clinic use. This peptide-fluorescent bacteria complex has great potential to become a new diagnostic tool for clinical application

Laboratory study of consolidation of marine soft soil using flocculation-vacuum preloading-electro-osmosis

To solve the technical issues in vacuum preloading method, including the sediment clogging of drains and the limitation of drainage conditions, this study investigated vacuum preloading combined with flocculation and electro-osmosis consolidation for marine soft soil. A series of column settling tests was conducted to determine the optimal organic flocculant for the combined method. With the selected organic flocculant, laboratory tests were performed on the soil samples using the combined consolidation method, in which the electro-osmosis was added at different time moments. The tests considered three representative cases at different time moments: (i) at 48 h, i.e., the initial stage of vacuum preloading with the consolidation degree of 0; (ii) at 60 h, i.e., the obvious reduction in the dewatering speed with the consolidation degree of 60%; and (iii) at 84 h, i.e., the dewatering speed of 0 with the consolidation degree of 80%. The effectiveness of the combined method was evaluated using the tested results, including water discharge, soil vane shear strength, water content, and pore water pressure, along with the determination of the best time for adding the electro-osmosis. The results indicated that the combined method effectively delayed the decrease of dewatering efficiency and significantly increased dewatering duration. Also, the shear strength and load-bearing capacity of the consolidated soil were clearly improved, with the evenly dissipated pore water pressure. In addition, the cationic polyamide was the optimal flocculant for the combined method, which enhanced the initial dewatering speed and improved the permeability of the soft soil to solve the sediment clogging in the plastic board during the vacuum preloading. This research demonstrated the effectiveness of vacuum preloading combined with flocculation and electroosmosis consolidation for soil improvement