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Objective To compare the clinical effects of needling at “five acupoints for swallow function” combined with rehabilitation training and only rehabilitation training in the treatment of dysphagia due to pseudobulbar paralysis after stroke. Methods Seventy-six patients were randomized into rehabilitation group and combination group, with 38 cases in each. Both groups were treated with basic treatment of western medicine. The rehabilitation group was treated with routine rehabilitation training, and the combination group was treated with acupuncture at “five acupoints for swallow function” based on treatment in the rehabilitation group. Patients in the two groups were treated once a day, 6 days a week, 1 day for rest, for 3 weeks in succession. The changes in the grades and scores of water swallow test (WST), video fluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS), and swallowing quality of life questionnaire (SWAL-QOL) in the two groups were observed before and after treatment, and the clinical effects of the two groups were compared. Results After treatment, the WST grades of the two groups were statistically different from that of before treatment (both P Conclusion The acupuncture combined with rehabilitation training for pseudobulbar paralysis after stroke is more effective than rehabilitation training only. The combination of the two can significantly relieve the dysphagia and improve the patients’ quality of life.

Multi-dimensional earthquake isolation and mitigation device (MEIMD) is a newly developed structural vibration control device. First, the horizontal and vertical property tests are performed to study the influences of excitation frequency and displacement amplitude on the dynamic properties of the MEIMD. In order to accurately describe the nonlinear characteristics of the device caused by the complex viscoelasticity, an integrated mathematical model based on fractional-derivative equivalent standard solid model is then proposed. Next, the horizontal and vertical shaking table tests on a 1/5-scale three-story steel frame structure equipped with and without the MEIMDs are presented, respectively. Finally, a dynamic response analysis method considering the nonlinearity of the MEIMD is proposed to analyze the dynamic responses of the controlled structure. The analysis results show that the MEIMD can provide excellent horizontal isolation ability, and good vertical isolation performance can be achieved through selecting reasonable pre-pressure value of the springs. The proposed mathematical model and dynamic response analysis method can effectively describe the nonlinearity of the MEIMDs and the structure with MEIMDs.

Nowadays, energy dissipation of buildings has caused serious problems to the environment for leading to overuse of resources in China. To reduce energy consumption and protect the environment, shale that widely distributed in China and the waste, including both building waste and industrial waste are used as raw materials to manufacture fired hollow blocks with 29-row holes which ensure the insulation properties and reduction of weight. As samples, 365 mm × 248 mm × 249 mm rectangular fire hollow blocks with density of 850 kg/m 3 were produced to study the mechanical and thermal properties of this wall material. The results satisfied the relevant Chinese Standard, and the block has a high compressive strength and reliable insulation performance comparing with fired common brick or other hollow blocks. Because of the excellent self-insulation characteristics, the blocks could be used directly as wall materials without requiring the usage of special insulation measures in masonry structures, which mean that this new-type material could reduce the cost of housing construction and had broad application prospect in masonry structures. Therefore, using this block could not only cut down the consumption of energy, but also could ease the pressure applied on the environment.

Objective To investigate the influence of knocking down ezrin expression in combination with heat shock protein (HSP)-induced immune killing on the apoptosis and proliferation of mouse osteosarcoma cells. Methods The HSP70 and ezrin-shRNA DNA fragments cloned into the expression vector pGFP-V-RS and the expression vectors pGFP-V-RS-shRNA and pGFP-V-RS-shRNA-HSP70 constructed and transfected into MG63 cell line, where their status was observed by fluorescent microscopy. Expression of ezrin and HSP70 was determined by RT-PCR and western blot. Changes in cell apoptosis and proliferation were assessed by flow cytometry and MTS and changes in expression of apoptosis and cell cycle-related proteins by western blot. Specific cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) were induced by HSP70 and its lethal effect on target MG63 tumor cells analyzed by MTS assay. Results The specific vector simultaneously downregulated ezrin and upregulated HSP70. Compared with ezrin knockdown alone, simultaneous HSP70 overexpression partially recovered the promoted cellular apoptosis and proliferation suppression by induced by ezrin knockdown; however, the apoptosis rate of MG63 cells was significantly greater than that of a negative control. In addition, ezrin-shRNA and ezrin-shRNA/HSP70 promoted expression of Bax. However, expression of these agents reduces Bcl-2 and Cyclin D1. The cytotoxic effects of CTLs on target MG63 tumor cells were significantly greater in the CTL + IL-2 + HSP70 group than the CTL + IL-2 group. Conclusions Simultaneously knocking down ezrin and overexpressing HSP70 promotes apoptosis and inhibits proliferation of osteosarcoma cells and HSP70 induces CTL, enhancing the lethal effect on tumor cells.

Weeds automatic identification is the key technique and also the bottleneck for implementation of variable spraying and precision pesticide. Therefore, accurate, rapid and non-destructive automatic identification of weeds has become a very important research direction for precision agriculture. Hyperspectral imaging system was used to capture the hyperspectral images of cabbage seedlings and five kinds of weeds such as pigweed, barnyard grass, goosegrass, crabgrass and setaria with the wavelength ranging from 1000 to 2500 nm. In ENVI, by utilizing the MNF rotation to implement the noise reduction and de-correlation of hyperspectral data and reduce the band dimensions from 256 to 11, and extracting the region of interest to get the spectral library as standard spectra, finally, using the SAM taxonomy to identify cabbages and weeds, the classification effect was good when the spectral angle threshold was set as 0. 1 radians. In HSI Analyzer, after selecting the training pixels to obtain the standard spectrum, the SAM taxonomy was used to distinguish weeds from cabbages. Furthermore, in order to measure the recognition accuracy of weeds quantificationally, the statistical data of the weeds and non-weeds were obtained by comparing the SAM classification image with the best classification effects to the manual classification image. The experimental results demonstrated that, when the parameters were set as 5-point smoothing, 0-order derivative and 7-degree spectral angle, the best classification result was acquired and the recognition rate of weeds, non-weeds and overall samples was 80%, 97.3% and 96.8% respectively. The method that combined the spectral imaging technology and the SAM taxonomy together took full advantage of fusion information of spectrum and image. By applying the spatial classification algorithms to establishing training sets for spectral identification, checking the similarity among spectral vectors in the pixel level, integrating the advantages of spectra and images meanwhile considering their accuracy and rapidity and improving weeds detection range in the full range that could detect weeds between and within crop rows, the above method contributes relevant analysis tools and means to the application field requiring the accurate information of plants in agricultural precision management