Search

(1) Background: Digital medicine is developing in the management of chronic diseases in older people, but there is still a lack of information on the use of disease management apps in older patients with COPD. This study aims to explore the views and experience of older patients with COPD on disease management apps to provide a basis for the development and promotion of apps for geriatric diseases. (2) Methods: A descriptive qualitative research method was used. Older patients with COPD (N = 32) with experience using disease management apps participated in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. (3) Results: Seven themes were defined: (a) feeling curious and worried when facing disease management apps for the first time; (b) actively overcoming barriers to use; (c) gradually becoming independent by continuous online learning; (d) feeling safe in the virtual environment; (e) gradually feeling new value in online interactions; (f) relying on disease management apps under long-term use; (g) expecting disease management apps to meet personalized needs. (4) Conclusions: The adoption and use of disease management apps by older people is a gradual process of acceptance, and they can obtain a wide range of benefits in health and life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Zhi zhu xiang (ZZX for short) is the root and rhizome of Valeriana jatamansi Jones, which is a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) used to treat various mood disorders for more than 2000 years, especially anxiety. The aim of the present work was to identify the bioactive chemical markers in Zhi zhu xiang improving anxiety in rats by a fingerprint-efficacy study. More specifically, the chemical fingerprint of ZZX samples collected from 10 different regions was determined by High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) and the similarity analyses were calculated based on 10 common characteristic peaks. The anti-anxiety effect of ZZX on empty bottle stimulated rats was examined through the Open Field Test (OFT) and the Elevated Plus Maze Test (EPM). Then we measured the concentration of CRF, ACTH, and CORT in rat's plasma by the enzyme-linked immune sorbent assay (ELISA) kit, while the concentration of monoamine and metabolites (NE, DA, DOPAC, HVA, 5-HT, 5-HIAA) in the rat's cerebral cortex and hippocampus was analysed by HPLC coupled with an Electrochemical Detector. At last, the fingerprint-efficacy study between chemical fingerprint and anti-anxiety effect of ZZX was accomplished by partial least squares regression (PLSR). As a result, we screened out four compounds (hesperidin, isochlorogenic acid A, isochlorogenic acid B and isochlorogenic acid C) as the bioactive chemical markers for the anti-anxiety effect of ZZX. The fingerprint-efficacy study we established might provide a feasible way and some elicitation for the identification of the bioactive chemical markers for TCM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The extensive use of electronic equipment in modern life causes potential electromagnetic pollution harmful to human health. Therefore, it is of great significance to enhance the electrical conductivity of polymers, which are widely used in electronic components, to screen out electromagnetic waves. The fabrication of graphene/polymer composites has attracted much attention in recent years due to the excellent electrical properties of graphene. However, the uniform distribution of graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) in a non-polar polymer matrix like polypropylene (PP) still remains a challenge, resulting in the limited improvement of electrical conductivity of PP-based composites achieved to date. Here, we propose a single-step approach to prepare GNPs/PP composites embedded with a segregated architecture of GNPs by coating PP particles with GNPs, followed by hot-pressing. As a result, the electrical conductivity of 10 wt % GNPs-loaded composites reaches 10.86 S·cm-1, which is ≈7 times higher than that of the composites made by the melt-blending process. Accordingly, a high electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness (EMI SE) of 19.3 dB can be achieved. Our method is green, low-cost, and scalable to develop 3D GNPs architecture in a polymer matrix, providing a versatile composite material suitable for use in electronics, aerospace, and automotive industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extrusion is widely used to construct models in 3D cadasters. However, the basic extrusion approach only supports relatively simple conditions, and a 3D cadastral data model that supports extruded 3D models that are associated with their corresponding footprints is not available. In this paper, we present a new extrusion approach based on non-overlapping footprints (EABNOF) that supports relatively complex 3D situations. In EABNOF, overlaps between overlapping footprints of the input data are removed, which also involves splitting extrusion intervals and handling the associated cadastral objects of footprints. The newly generated non-overlapping footprints are extruded to generate primitives. To construct geometric models and topologies for cadastral objects, three judgment criteria are proposed to identify and remove redundancies from these primitives, and then primitives of the same 3D spatial unit or topological feature are merged. Considering the feasibility of using EABNOF for current cadastral data, we design a data model that associates 3D cadastral data with the footprints of 2D cadasters. We examine two types of structures on Pozi Street to verify EABNOF: a building complex and property objects. The results demonstrate that EABNOF can construct geometric models and topologies in 3D cadasters. EABNOF is based on the footprints of 2D cadastral data, and thus is particularly suited to areas with 2D cadastral data to establish 3D cadasters with low costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Longzi River Basin in Tibet is located along the edge of the Himalaya Mountains and is characterized by complex geological conditions and numerous landslides. To evaluate the susceptibility of landslide disasters in this area, eight basic factors were analyzed comprehensively in order to obtain a final susceptibility map. The eight factors are the slope angle, slope aspect, plan curvature, distance-to-fault, distance-to-river, topographic relief, annual precipitation, and lithology. Except for the rainfall factor, which was extracted from the grid cell, all the factors were extracted and classified by the slope unit, which is the basic unit in geological disaster development. The eight factors were superimposed using the information content method (ICM), and the weight of each factor was acquired through an analytic hierarchy process (AHP). The sensitivities of the landslides were divided into four categories: low, moderate, high, and very high, respectively, accounting for 22.76%, 38.64%, 27.51%, and 11.09% of the study area. The accuracies of the area under AUC using slope units and grid cells are 82.6% and 84.2%, respectively, and it means that the two methods are accurate in predicting landslide occurrence. The results show that the high and very high susceptibility areas are distributed throughout the vicinity of the river, with a large component in the north as well as a small portion in the middle and the south. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct landslide warnings in these areas, where the rivers are vast and the population is dense. The susceptibility map can reflect the comprehensive risk of each slope unit, which provides an important reference for later detailed investigations, including research and warning studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two novel series of diaryl urea derivatives 5a–i and 13a–l were synthesized and evaluated for their cytotoxicity against H-460, HT-29, A549, and MDA-MB-231 cancer cell lines in vitro. Therein, 4-aminoquinazolinyl-diaryl urea derivatives 5a–i demonstrated significant activity, and seven of them are more active than sorafenib, with IC50 values ranging from 0.089 to 5.46 μM. Especially, compound 5a exhibited the most active potency both in cellular (IC50 = 0.15, 0.089, 0.36, and 0.75 μM, respectively) and enzymatic assay (IC50 = 56 nM against EGFR), representing a promising lead for further optimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Additive manufacturing (AM), sometimes called three-dimensional (3D) printing, has attracted a lot of research interest and is presenting unprecedented opportunities in biomedical fields, because this technology enables the fabrication of biomedical constructs with great freedom and in high precision. An important strategy in AM of biomedical constructs is to mimic the structural organizations of natural biological organisms. This can be done by directly depositing cells and biomaterials, depositing biomaterial structures before seeding cells, or fabricating molds before casting biomaterials and cells. This review organizes the research advances of AM-based biomimetic biomedical constructs into three major directions: 3D constructs that mimic tubular and branched networks of vasculatures; 3D constructs that contains gradient interfaces between different tissues; and 3D constructs that have different cells positioned to create multicellular systems. Other recent advances are also highlighted, regarding the applications of AM for organs-on-chips, AM-based micro/nanostructures, and functional nanomaterials. Under this theme, multiple aspects of AM including imaging/characterization, material selection, design, and printing techniques are discussed. The outlook at the end of this review points out several possible research directions for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ruscogenin, an important steroid sapogenin derived from Ophiopogon japonicus, has been shown to inhibit cerebral ischemic injury. However, its potential molecular action on blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction after stroke remains unclear. This study aimed to investigate the effects of ruscogenin on BBB dysfunction and the underlying mechanisms in middle cerebral artery occlusion/reperfusion (MCAO/R)-injured mice and oxygen-glucose deprivation/reoxygenation (OGD/R)-injured mouse brain microvascular endothelial cells (bEnd.3). The results demonstrated that administration of ruscogenin (10 mg/kg) decreased the brain infarction and edema, improved neurological deficits, increased cerebral brain flow (CBF), ameliorated histopathological damage, reduced evans blue (EB) leakage and upregulated the expression of tight junctions (TJs) in MCAO/R-injured mice. Meanwhile, ruscogenin (0.1-10 μM) treatment increased cell viability and trans-endothelial electrical resistance (TEER) value, decreased sodium fluorescein leakage, and modulated the TJs expression in OGD/R-induced bEnd.3 cells. Moreover, ruscogenin also inhibited the expression of interleukin-1β(IL-1β) and caspase-1, and markedly suppressed the expression of Nucleotide-binding domain (NOD)-like receptor family, pyrin domain containing 3 (NLRP3) and thiredoxin-interactive protein (TXNIP) in vivo and in vitro. Furthermore, ruscogenin decreased reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and inhibited the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway in OGD/R-induced bEnd.3 cells. Our findings provide some new insights into its potential application for the prevention and treatment of ischemic stroke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hot-water extraction, purification and characterization of polysaccharides from defatted peanut cake (PPC) were investigated in this study. A Box-Behnken factorial design (BBD) was used to investigate the effects of three independent variables, namely extraction temperature (X1), extraction time (X2) and ratio of water to raw material (X3). The optimum conditions were 85 °C, 3 h and 20:1 (mL/g) respectively. Regression analysis was done to reveal the experimental results which include 34.97% extraction rate while the value verified under these conditions was 34.49%. The crude PPC was sequentially further purified by Sephadex G-100 chromatography, and one purified fraction was obtained. The PPC purified fraction was characterized by FT-IR, HPAEC; SEC-MALLS. The average molecular weight of the PPC purified fraction was 2.383 + 105 Da. The polysaccharide was mainly composed of glucose, galactose, arabinose and xylose. The PPC have the typical absorption of polysaccharide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The activity of urate oxidase was lost during hominoid evolution, resulting in high susceptibility to hyperuricemia and gout in humans. In order to develop a more "human-like" uricase for therapeutic use, exon replacement/restoration and site-directed mutagenesis were performed to obtain porcine-human uricase with higher homology to deduced human uricase (dHU) and increased uricolytic activity. In an exon replacement study, substitution of exon 6 in wild porcine uricase (wPU) gene with corresponding exon in dhu totally abolished its activity. Substitutions of exon 5, 3, and 1-2 led to 85%, 60%, and 45% loss of activity, respectively. However, replacement of exon 4 and 7-8 did not significantly change the enzyme activity. When exon 5, 6, and 3 in dhu were replaced by their counterparts in wpu, the resulting chimera H1-2P3H4P5-6H7-8 was active, but only about 28% of wPU. Multiple sequence alignment and homology modeling predicted that mutations of E24D and E83G in H1-2P3H4P5-6H7-8 were favorable for further increase of its activity. After site-directed mutagenesis, H1-2P3H4P5-6H7-8 (E24D & E83G) with increased homology (91.45%) with dHU and higher activity and catalytic efficiency than the FDA-approved porcine-baboon chimera (PBC) was obtained. It showed optimum activity at pH 8.5 and 35 °C and was stable in a pH range of 6.5-11.0 and temperature range of 20-40 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When applying the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) for precise kinematic positioning in airborne and shipborne gravimetry, multiple GNSS receiving equipment is often fixed mounted on the kinematic platform carrying the gravimetry instrumentation. Thus, the distances among these GNSS antennas are known and invariant. This information can be used to improve the accuracy and reliability of the state estimates. For this purpose, the known distances between the antennas are applied as a priori constraints within the state parameters adjustment. These constraints are introduced in such a way that their accuracy is taken into account. To test this approach, GNSS data of a Baltic Sea shipborne gravimetric campaign have been used. The results of our study show that an application of distance constraints improves the accuracy of the GNSS kinematic positioning, for example, by about 4 mm for the radial component. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The DNA binding property of 5,10,15-Tris(4-carboxyphenyl) corrole (TCPC) was studied by UV-Visible, fluorescence and circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopic methods. TCPC can bind to ct-DNA via an outside binding mode with the binding constant of Kb = 1.05 x 105 M-1. TCPC also displayed good photonuclease activity, which involves singlet oxygen species (¹O2). The binding constant between TCPC and human serum albumin (HSA) is KA = 2.24 x 105 M-1 with a simulated binding distance of 2.06 nm. The fluorescence quenching of HSA by TCPC followed a static quenching process. Site marker competitive displacement experiments indicated that warfarin site I is the main binding site. The secondary structure of HSA was changed upon interaction with TCPC, which was confirmed by UV-Visible and CD spectroscopy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to address the performance complexity of the various constituent materials of (dense-column) latticed concrete-gypsum composite panels and the difficulty in the determination of the various elastic constants, this paper presented a detailed structural analysis of the (dense-column) latticed concrete-gypsum composite panel and proposed a feasible technical solution to simplified calculation. In conformity with mechanical rules, a typical panel element was selected and divided into two homogenous composite sub-elements and a secondary homogenous element, respectively for solution, thus establishing an equivalence of the composite panel to a simple homogenous panel and obtaining the effective formulas for calculating the various elastic constants. Finally, the calculation results and the experimental results were compared, which revealed that the calculation method was correct and reliable and could meet the calculation needs of practical engineering and provide a theoretical basis for simplified calculation for studies on composite panel elements and structures as well as a reference for calculations of other panels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to evaluate the seismic performance of new-type composite exterior wallboard, a total of six exterior and interior wallboards were incorporated in the experiment of seismic performance. Seismic performance such as the stress process, damage mode, hysteresis and skeleton curve, load-carrying and ductility coefficient, damping and energy dissipation, stiffness degradation as well as material strain of the exterior wallboards were analyzed with emphasis and compared with interior wallboards. Results of the experiment and analysis showed that both interior and exterior wallboards exhibited outstanding seismic performance. Due to the existence of insulation layer and externally bonded single gypsum board, the capacity of elastoplastic deformation and seismic energy dissipation of the exterior wallboards was improved and each seismic performance indicator of the exterior wallboards outperformed the interior wallboards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the mediating effect of resilience in the relationship between spirituality and self-management among older people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The participants were 151 older people with COPD in four general hospitals in Jiangsu Province, China. Data were collected from September 2020 to May 2021 using a questionnaire developed by the investigator, the Function Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Spiritual Scale (FACIT-SP-12), 10-item Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC-10), and COPD Self-Management Scale (CSMS). One-way ANOVA and t-test were used to compare the level of self-management in patients with different sociodemographic and clinical characteristics. Partial correlation analysis was used to explore the correlation between spirituality, resilience, and self-management. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed to examine the contribution of spirituality and resilience to the prediction of self-management. A bootstrapping test was implemented using the SPSS PROCESS macro to test the statistical significance of the mediating effect. There was a pairwise positive correlation between spirituality, resilience, and self-management. Resilience mediated the relationship between spirituality and self-management. These findings suggested that resilience interventions could be incorporated into future COPD self-management interventions to better improve self-management and health outcomes. Moreover, resilience should be an important component of healthy aging initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The long-term Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) time-series data set generated from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometers (AVHRR) has been widely used to monitor vegetation activity change. The third version of NDVI (NDVI3g) produced by the Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) group was released recently. The comparisons between the new and old versions should be conducted for linking existing studies with future applications of NDVI3g in monitoring vegetation activity change. Based on simple and piecewise linear regression methods, this study made a comparative analysis between NDVIg and NDVI3g for monitoring vegetation activity change and its responses to climate change in the middle and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere during 1982-2008. Our results indicated that there were large differences between NDVIg and NDVI3g in the spatial patterns for both the overall changing trends and the timing of Turning Points (TP) in NDVI time series, which spread over almost the entire study region. The average NDVI trend from NDVI3g was almost twice as great as that from NDVIg and the detected average timing of TP from NDVI3g was about one year later. Although the general spatial patterns were consistent between two data sets for detecting the responses of growing-season NDVI to temperature and precipitation changes, there were large differences in the response magnitude, with a higher response magnitude to temperature in NDVI3g and an opposite response to precipitation change for the two data sets. These results demonstrated that the NDVIg data set may underestimate the vegetation activity change trend and its response to climate change in the middle and high latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere during the past three decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the hybrid pharmacophore design concept, a novel series of dual diaryl urea and N-acylhydrazone derivatives were synthesized and evaluated for their in vitro cytotoxicity by the standard MTT assay. The pharmacological results indicated that most compounds exhibited moderate to excellent activity. Moreover, compound 2g showed the most potent cytotoxicity against HL-60, A549 and MDA-MB-231 cell lines, with IC50 values of 0.22, 0.34 and 0.41 μM, respectively, which was 3.8 to 22.5 times more active than the reference compounds sorafenib and PAC-1. The promising compound 2g thus emerges as a lead for further structural modifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two series of novel 2-substituted-4-amino-6-halogenquinolines 8a-l and 13a-h were designed, synthesized and evaluated for their antiproliferative activity against H-460, HT-29, HepG2 and SGC-7901 cancer cell lines in vitro. The pharmacological results indicated that most compounds with 2-arylvinyl substituents exhibited good to excellent antiproliferative activity. Among them, compound 8e was a considered promising lead for further structural modifications with IC50 values of 0.03 μM, 0.55 μM, 0.33 μM and 1.24 μM, which was 2.5- to 186-fold more active than gefitinib and compound 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Androgen receptor antagonists have been proved to be effective anti-prostate cancer agents. 3D-QSAR and Molecular docking methods were performed on curcumin derivatives as androgen receptor antagonists. The bioactive conformation was explored by docking the potent compound 29 into the binding site of AR. The constructed Comparative Molecular Field Analysis (CoMFA) and Comparative Similarity Indices Analysis (CoMSIA) models produced statistically significant results with the cross-validated correlation coefficients q2 of 0.658 and 0.567, non-cross-validated correlation coefficients r2 of 0.988 and 0.978, and predicted correction coefficients r2pred of 0.715 and 0.793, respectively. These results ensure the CoMFA and CoMSIA models as a tool to guide the design of novel potent AR antagonists. A set of 30 new analogs were proposed by utilizing the results revealed in the present study, and were predicted with potential activities in the developed models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]