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This study investigated the pharmacological and pathological effects of aqueous mulberry leaf extract on type 1 diabetes mellitus mice induced with an intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (STZ). Diabetic mice were randomized into six groups: control (normal group), model, metformin-treated mice, and high-dose, medium-dose, and low-dose mulberry. The mulberry-treated mice were divided into high-, medium-, and low-dose groups based on the various doses of aqueous mulberry leaf extract during gavage. The efficacy of the six-week intervention was evaluated by measuring levels of fasting plasma glucose, alkaline phosphatase, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate transaminase, blood urea nitrogen, gamma-glutamyl transferase, glucose, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, lactate dehydrogenase, and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and recording body weight. Results revealed that mulberry leaf extract exhibited an ideal hypoglycemic effect, and the high-dose group was the most affected. Histology analysis, glycogen staining and apoptosis detection were used to study the extract’s effects on the liver, kidney, and pancreatic cells of diabetic mice, enabling the assessment of its effectiveness and complications on a clinical and theoretical basis. It was shown that a certain concentration of aqueous mulberry leaf extract repaired the islet cells of type 1 diabetes mellitus mice, promoting normal insulin secretion. Herein, it was confirmed that mulberry leaf could be used to develop new hypoglycemic drugs or functional health food with broad applicability.

Abstract Background The short-term 0–1–2-month hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination schedule was previously implemented in the adult population; however, its long-term immune effect remains unclear. The present study aimed to investigate (1) the 2-month and 2-year immune effects of HBV vaccination and (2) the compliance rate between the 0–1–2-month and 0–1–6-month vaccination schedules in adults. Method A total of 1281 subjects tested for hepatitis B surface antigen HBsAg(−) and hepatitis B surface antibody (anti-HBs)(−) were recruited. Participants from two distant counties were inoculated with the hepatitis B yeast vaccine at 10 µg per dose, with vaccination schedules of 0, 1, and 2 months (n = 606) and 0, 1, and 6 months (n = 675); sequential follow-up was performed at 2 months and 2 years after the 3rd injection. Results There were no significant differences in the anti-HBs seroconversion rates between the those in the 0–1–2-month and 0–1–6-month vaccination schedule groups at 2 months (91.96% vs. 89.42%, p = 0.229) and 2 years (81.06% vs. 77.14%, p = 0.217). The quantitative anti-HBs level in those in the 0–1–2-month vaccination schedule group was not different from that in those in the 0–1–6-month vaccination schedule group at 2 months (anti-HBs1) (342.12 ± 378.42 mIU/ml vs. 392.38 ± 391.96 mIU/ml, p = 0.062), but it was higher at 2 years (anti-HBs2) (198.37 ± 286.44 mIU/ml vs. 155.65 ± 271.73 mIU/ml, p = 0.048). According to the subgroup analysis, the 0–1–2-month vaccination schedule induced better maintenance (p = 0.041) and longer reinforcement (p = 0.019) than the 0–1–6 vaccination schedule. The 0–1–2-month vaccination schedule group also had a higher 3rd injection completion rate (89.49% vs. 84.49%, p = 0.010). Conclusion The 0–1–2-month vaccination schedule was associated with a similar short-term immune effect and might induce better long-term immune memory and a higher completion rate in the adult population. Trial registration None

Taking the extraction yield of Bletilla striata polysaccharide (BSP) as the index and taking the type of deep eutectic solvents (DESs), extraction time, extraction temperature, DES water content, and solid–liquid ratio as the investigation factors, single-factor and Box–Behnken response surface tests were carried out to optimize the extraction process of BSP. Thus, the antioxidant activity of BSP on DPPH radicals, ABTS radicals and ferric reducing antioxidant power were determined. The results showed that the most suitable deep eutectic solvent was DES-2, namely choline chloride-urea. The optimal extraction conditions for BSP were an extraction time of 47 min, extraction temperature of 78 °C, water content of 35%, and solid–liquid ratio of 1:25. Under this optimized condition, the extraction yield of BSP was able to reach (558.90 ± 8.83) mg/g, and recycling studies indicated the good cycle stability of the DES. Antioxidant results showed that BSP had superior antioxidant activity and had a dose–response relationship with drug concentration. Compared with Bletilla striata polysaccharide obtained via conventional hot water extraction (BSP-W), the extraction yield of BSP obtained through this method (BSP-2) increased by 36.77%, the scavenging activity of DPPH radicals increased by 24.99%, the scavenging activity of ABTS radicals increased by 41.16%, and the ferric reducing antioxidant power increased by 49.19%. Therefore, DESs as new green reagents and BSP extracted with DESs not only had a high yield but also had strong antioxidant activity.

High-fall accidents refer to accidents where construction personnel, building materials, and equipment fall from a height, usually resulting in serious casualties and significant economic losses. This paper proposes a high-fall flexible protection system and its design approach with a tensile yield energy-consuming mechanism to solve high-fall accidents. The design approach based on component characteristics that obtained through tests contains energy matching, component internal force balance, and a two-level energy consumption mechanism. Component tests were conducted with mesh bursting tests and energy dissipator static tensile tests to obtain the characteristics of the intercepting net under the flexible boundary condition, and the force-displacement model of the ring-type energy dissipater. Combined with an actual project, we designed a high-fall flexible protection system with a protection energy level of 800 kJ for the core tube of an ultra-high-rise building construction using this method. The impact of dynamic response under multiple cases including the overall fall of the construction formwork was analyzed by dynamical numerical calculation models. The result shows that the system can effectively intercept high-falling objects and exhibit good two-stage energy dissipation characteristics to consume the impact energy. Compared with the protection system without an energy consumption mechanism, the internal force response of the steel wire rope and the suspended frame reduce by about 60%, and the energy consumption capacity increase more than six times. The protection technique proposed in this paper can effectively solve the problem of high-level impact protection such as falling construction formwork equipment, and improve construction safety.

This study evaluates the performance of a practical IEEE 802.15.4/4e/4g low-rate (LR) wireless personal area network (WPAN) with multiple physical (PHY) layers and multi-hop capabilities for smart utility networks, machine-tomachine networks and other advanced sensor networks. The proposal includes realistic design considerations addressing demands of practical applications, country-specific regulatory requirements and technical specification in international standards. A cross-layer open system interconnection model from the application, transport, network, medium access control, down to the multiple PHY layers is constructed based on the specification in IEEE 802.15.4 LR-WPAN and other layer-specific standards. Employing the cross-layer model, extensive computer simulations were conducted to investigate the performance of the LR-WPAN system in this application domain. As a result, the authors have successfully verified the simulated achievable average throughput in both PHY layer designs, multi-rate and multi-regional frequency shift keying (MR-FSK) and multi-rate and multi-regional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MR-OFDM) with the theoretical throughput by calculation. Secondly, in a multi-PHY environment with the presence of 30 interferer devices, throughput degradation of the victim system is observed within 30%. Furthermore, when interferer devices transmit frames with interval beyond 1 s, the degradation to the victim system becomes negligible. Thirdly, MR-FSK PHY has a simpler design with higher energy-efficiency, whereas MR-OFDM PHY is more complicated with more resilience to interference. They have found an interference tolerance capability difference of 15 dB between the MR-FSK and MR-OFDM systems. Fourthly, comparing with their single-hop counterparts, multi-hop systems have lower average throughput in MR-FSK by 25% and MR-OFDM by 10%. Finally, comparing with networks with periodical beacon transmissions, asynchronous networks have more inferior average throughput of 20% in MR-FSK and 3% in MR-OFDM, with the advantage of longer battery lifespan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the performance of complete complementary code-based spread-time code-division multiple access (CC-ST-CDMA) in frequency-nonselective and frequency-selective fading channels. The theoretical bit-error-rate (BER) expressions conditioned on the number of users and the sequence length (and the number of resolvable paths for multipath frequency-selective fading) are obtained. The theoretical approximation of the BER for the system using long-sequence-length complete complementary codes is investigated as well. The simulations are conducted over flat-fading and two-path frequency-selective fading channels and have been used to verify the theoretical analysis. The results show that the proposed CC-ST-CDMA system has a comparable BER performance with complete complementary code-based multicarrier direct-sequence code-division multiple access (CC-MC.DSCDMA) for a flat.fading channel. However, for a frequency-selective fading channel, the CC-ST-CDMA is found to be more resistant, resulting in about 2-3 dB better performance than the CC-MC.DSCDMA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Complete Complementary (CC) codes have been able to improve the performance of multicarrier CDMA system for both downlink and uplink transmission. However, the number of users supported by CC code design is limited as its family size is relatively small. In this letter, an extension to CC codes using Zadoff-Chu sequence is proposed. The proposed codes are able to support large number of users and have perfect auto- and cross-correlation function just like CC codes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]