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Smell and taste dysfunctions (STD) are frequently observed in patients with coronavirus disease (COVID-19). To investigate the clinical characteristics of STD in COVID-19 patients. One-hundred six COVID-19 adult patients with the Omicron variant were enrolled. The clinical features of patients with and without STD were compared using questionnaires, laboratory tests, and imaging examinations. Of the 76 patients with smell and/or taste dysfunction, age (p =.002), vaccination time (p =.024), history of systemic diseases (p =.032), and smoking status (p =.044) were significantly different from those of the controls (n = 34). Fatigue (p =.001), headache (p =.004), myalgia (p =.047), and gastrointestinal discomfort (p =.001) were observed more frequently in these patients than in controls. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale score of these patients was significantly higher than that of controls (p <.001). The taste visual assessment scale score of the STD group was significantly lower than that of the taste dysfunction group (p =.001), and perceptions of sour, sweet, and salty tastes were worse in the STD group than in the taste dysfunction group (p <.001). COVID-19 patients had similar changes in smell and/or taste dysfunctions and worse emotional states, possibly correlated with some factors, including age and vaccination time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies a delayed viral infection model with diffusion and a general incidence rate. A discrete-time model was derived by applying nonstandard finite difference scheme. The positivity and boundedness of solutions are presented. We established the global stability of equilibria in terms of R 0 by applying Lyapunov method. The results showed that if R 0 is less than 1, then the infection-free equilibrium E 0 is globally asymptotically stable. If R 0 is greater than 1, then the infection equilibrium E ∗ is globally asymptotically stable. Numerical experiments are carried out to illustrate the theoretical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we designed and analysed a discrete model to solve a delayed within-host viral infection model by using non-standard finite difference scheme. The original model that we considered was a delayed viral infection model with cell-to-cell transmission, cell-mediated immune response and general nonlinear incidence. We show that the discrete model has equilibria which are exactly the same as those of the original continuous model and the conditions for those equilibria to be globally asymptotically stable are consistent with the original continuous model with no restriction on the time step size. The results imply that the discretization scheme can efficiently preserves the qualitative properties of solutions for corresponding continuous model. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this investigation, eight novel 2,5-disubstituted [1,2,4]-triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidin-7(4H)-one and eight novel 2,5-disubstituted [1,2,4]-triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidine amine derivatives were synthesized based on the novel marine natural product Essramycin. Their anti-epileptic activities were evaluated by 4-aminopyridine (4-AP)-induced hyper excitability model in primary cultured neocortical neurons. Five compounds with [1,2,4]-triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidin-7(4H)-one skeleton showed remarkable anti-epileptic activities. The preliminary structure–activity relationship (SAR) showed that the pyrimidine-7(4H)-one motif is the necessary "active core" of anti-epileptic activity. To understand the action mechanism of anti-epileptic activity of [1,2,4]-triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidin-7(4H)-one compounds, docking studies using the model of GABAA as docking scaffolds were performed and the docking results were in concordance with the experiment observations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To improve the accuracy of phase recovery in quantitative phase imaging, a novel two-stage synthetic denoising method is proposed in this paper. In this method, to avoid the loss of effective detail information, the mode of fixed attenuation parameter setting is changed into two stages of self-adaptation setting: the first attenuation parameter is defined as the convolution of filtered pixels in the window of interest, the second attenuation parameter is defined as the noise standard deviation of each pixel after filtering in the first stage. Moreover, the Pearson coefficient expression is redefined to get a more accurate similarity evaluation, and the algorithm's operational efficiency has been improved using cross-correlation functions and fast Fourier transform. The comparative results of simulations and experiments show that this method is more effective in reducing speckle noise in quantitative phase imaging and enhancing phase recovery accuracy, providing a new digital image denoizing method for efficient and accurate imaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An efficient formal synthesis of (±)-glabridin was accomplished in 10 steps from resorcinol using Raney Ni to reduce carbon–carbon double bonds inα,β-unsaturated carbonyl compound as the key step. [Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition ofSynthetic Communications® for the following free supplemental resource(s): Full experimental and spectral details.] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]