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Background Metabolic syndrome is characterised by at least three of the following clinical features: abdominal obesity, dyslipidaemia, high blood pressure and glucose intolerance; it has also been associated with depression and anxiety. Cupping has been shown to benefit psychological well-being by alleviating anger, hostility, depression and anxiety. Objectives To investigate the effects of wet cupping on depression and anxiety in patients with metabolic syndrome. Methods Altogether 136 patients with metabolic syndrome (aged 18–65 years) were included. Ten patients were excluded owing to a history of haemophilia, systemic disorder, infectious disease, stroke, heart attack, type 1 diabetes, secondary dyslipidaemia, renal dysfunction, epilepsy and drug therapy. Patients were randomly divided into an experimental group (n=63), which received dietary advice with wet cupping, and a control group (n=63) receiving dietary advice alone. Treatment was administered for 3 months. Depression and anxiety were assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory at 0, 6 and 12 weeks after treatment. Data were analysed using ANOVA. Results There were no statistically significant correlations between depression and anxiety and weight, BMI and lipid profile (P>0.05). However, there was a statistically significant association between the psychological parameters and blood pressure, age and gender (P

To investigate the protective effects of rosiglitazone on the endothelial cells in a rabbit iliac artery balloon injury, thirty male New Zealand white rabbits were randomly divided into control group (hypercholesterol diet), balloon injury group (hypercholesterol diet plus balloon endothelial denudation) and rosiglitazone group (balloon endothelial denudation plus hypercholesterol diet and rosiglitazone). Rabbits were fed for eight weeks, and balloon endothelial denudation was performed. Rosiglitazone was administrated at a dose of 0.5 mg·kg-1·d-1 from three days before surgery, and lasted for 4 weeks. Four weeks later, blood was collected and serum lipids, glucose, hs-CRP, NO, NOS and ET-1 levels were measured. Then, local iliac arteries were obtained for morphological examination and immunohistochemistry for PCNA and apoptosis. When compared with balloon injury group, the levels of serum TC, TG, LDL-C, ET-1 were significantly decreased in the rosiglitazone group. Morphological examination showed the intimal area (IA), medial area (MA) and intimal proliferation index in rosiglitazone group were significantly lower than those in the balloon injury group. The PCNA expression was markedly decreased and the apoptosis rate significantly increased in rosiglitazone group when compared with the balloon injury group. Rosiglitazone could exert protective effects on the endothelial cells after balloon injury in which the lipid-lowering, inhibited proliferation and increased apoptosis of endothelial cells, and compromised NOS activity and secretion of NO and ET-1 played important roles. Key words: Rosiglitazone, apoptosis, nitric oxide synthase, endothelin, rabbit.

High-power microwave (HPM) weapon, which is destructive to electronic systems, has developed rapidly due to the great progress of HPM devices and technologies. Plasma with distinctive electromagnetic characteristics is under advisement as one of potentially effective protection materials. Therefore, research on avalanche ionization effect in plasma caused by the interaction between HPM and plasma is of significance for its HPM protection performance. Based on the method of fluid approximation, the wave equation, the electron drift diffusion equation and the heavy species transport equation, explaining the propagation of microwave and the change of the charged particles inside plasma, are established to study the avalanche ionization effect under the HPM radiation. A two-dimensional physical model is built with the help of software COMSOL according to the plasma protection array designed to disturb the propagation of the HPM pulses. It can be shown that the emergence of avalanche effect is greatly affected by the incident power of microwave, and the generation time would be influenced by the initial electron density. Moreover, it can be observed that the avalanche effect appears only when the plasma array is irradiated for a period of time, which means that the performance of HPM is presented as gathering effect, and a large amount of energy is needed to change the internal particle balance in plasma. In addition, the electron density inside the plasma changes rapidly and complicatedly while the avalanche effect comes into being. Besides, the cutoff frequency of the plasma exceeds the frequency of the incident wave with the increase of electron density, which leads to that the electromagnetic wave cannot propagate in the plasma, so that the plasma can be used to protect the HPM irradiation.

Summary Introduction It has previously been reported that increased level of serum heat shock proteins (Hsps) antibody in patients with metabolic syndrome. It is possible that the expression of Hsp and inflammatory markers can be affected by cupping and traditional Chinese medicine. There is a little data investigating the effects of cupping on markers of inflammation and Hsp proteins, hence, the objective of this study was evaluation of the effects of wet cupping on serum high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and Hsp27 antibody titers in patients with metabolic syndrome. Subjects and methods Serum Hs-CRP and Hsp27 antibody titers were assessed in samples from 126 patients with metabolic syndrome (18–65 years of age) at baseline, and after 6 and 12 weeks after treatment. One hundred and twenty-six patients were randomly divided into the experimental group treated with wet cupping combined with dietary advice, and the control group treated with dietary advice alone using a random number table. Eight patients in case group and five subjects in control groups were excluded from the study. Data were analyzed using SPSS 15.0 software and a repeated measure ANCOVA. Results Serum hs-CRP titers did not change significantly between groups (p > 0.05) and times (p = 0.27). The same result was found for Hsp27 titers (p > 0.05). Conclusion Wet-cupping on the interscapular region has no effect on serum hs-CRP and Hsp27 patients with metabolic syndrome.

High serum cholesterol is an important risk factor for cardiovascular events. It has been reported that regular blood donation is associated with a reduction in serum cholesterol. This study aimed to determine the effects of wet cupping on lipid profiles and anthropometric characteristics of patients with metabolic syndrome. One hundred and thirty-six patients aged 18–65 years with metabolic syndrome were recruited to participate in this trial. Ten patients were excluded due to exclusion criteria. Patients (n = 126) were randomly assigned into the control (n = 63) and experimental (n = 63) groups. Patients in the experimental group were treated with wet cupping combined with dietary advice. The controls were given dietary advice only. Anthropometric and biochemical parameters were assessed at baseline and at six and 12 weeks after treatment. The significance of the data was analyzed using a repeated measure ANOVA. The lipid profile status did not differ significantly between the two groups (p > 0.05) whereas there was a significant difference between the two time points within each group (p < 0.05). In addition, several anthropometric parameters improved in both groups, but this did not differ significantly between subject groups. Wet cupping does not have a significant effect on anthropometric or biochemical indices compared to the effect of dietary advice alone.

Along with the development of injection molding industry, more demand for injection molding manipulator are brought up, in which the multi-spots parking is an important demand. Now frequency conversion motor or AC motor servo are commonly used in positioning of the manipulator traverse process. Based on the study of pneumatic multi-spots parking technology, this article is focus on the pneumatic motor combining of magnetorheological brake technology, thus new methods of multi-spots parking is put forward.

High impedance surface, due to its unique property of in-phase reflection at some frequency, could be used in designing multiband Salisbury screen by replacing the metallic ground plane in a traditional structure, which is proposed, in this paper, to enhance the microwave absorbing performance of the conventional Salisbury screen. First, electromagnetic wave field intensity of different frequency in space after being reflected by a high impedance surface is analyzed, which implies that new absorption bands can be introduced at about the frequencies of in-phase reflection by sharing Salisbury screen’s resistive sheet, without adding extra lossy materials such as lumped elements or others. Then, by taking a single band high impedance surface at 6.25 GHz and a dual-band high impedance surface at 6.27 and 8.17 GHz, which are both composed of patches array with varying periodic size and a thickness of 0.6 mm, the multiband Salisbury screens can be constructed utilizing a conventional one with an absorbing peak at about 10.5 GHz. The reflectivity of these multiband absorbers are simulated by employing the commercial CST microwave studio and later measured using a reflectivity measurement system comprising two polarized horns and a vector network analyzer. Experimental results agree well with the simulations, and all results verify that the method presented at the beginning is effective. Results also show that new additional absorptions appear at the frequencies where microwaves are nearly reflected in phase from the high impedance surface, with the same number of the in-phase reflection bands. Meanwhile, the original microwave absorbing capability of the traditional Salisbury screen is reserved mostly. Compared to the single band high impedance surface, the dual-band high impedance surface performs better in the design as the absorbing bandwidth is wider and the absorbing frequency is lower. With an additional thickness of the high impedance surface (no more than 1 mm), the total absorption bandwidth of the multiband Salisbury screen with a reflection below -10 dB increases from 8.5 to 10.1 GHz, and the lowest frequency with 10 dB absorption falls from 7.5 to 5.98 GHz. So it could be concluded that the design of multiband Salisbury screen is helpful to widen the absorption, especially towards the lower frequency direction.

We develop a solar simulator composed of multiple xenon arc lamps combined with a faceted paraboloidal dish concentrator to drive a Stirling engine in our laboratory for all-weather indoor testing. Experiments and numerical analysis are performed to determine the radiation flux and temperature distributions on the solar receiver surface. Based on the theoretical results, we present a receiver design for a solar Stirling engine with involute tubes closely conforming to the imaginary hemisphere to obtain a substantially uniform temperature field and a high solar-thermal efficiency of 67.1%.

Three-dimensional SiO2 photonic crystals (PhCs) are fabricated on quartz substrates by the vertical deposition method. Scanning electron microscopy measurement reveals that the samples exhibit an ordered close-packed arrangement of SiO2 spheres. It is found that the position of the [111] photonic band gap (PBG) shifts to a long wavelength (red shift) with increasing sphere size. Gap broadening effects are observed due to the presence of defects in the samples. Moreover, the optical properties of the PBG are very sensitive to the annealing temperature. Our results indicate that the optical properties of the PBG can be easily tuned in the visible region by appropriate experimental parameters, which will be useful for practical applications of PhC optical devices.