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Background: Osteoporosis is becoming more prevalent in aging societies worldwide, and the economic burden attributable to osteoporotic fractures is substantial. The medications presently available to treat osteoporosis have side effects. Acupuncture is widely used for treating osteoporotic postmenopausal women because it is non-invasive and has fewer side effects, but the powerful clinical evidence for its efficacy remains insufficient. Our study intends to explore the effect of overall adjustment acupuncture (OA) in the treatment of postmenopausal osteoporosis (PMOP).Methods/design: This study is a randomized, sham-controlled, patient- and assessor-blinded trial and aims to evaluate the effect of OA in women with PMOP. We will recruit 104 women aged 45-70 years with a diagnosis of PMOP. Participants will be randomly allocated in a 1:1 ratio to the OA group and the sham acupuncture (SA) group. Both groups will receive real herbal medicine treatment as a basic treatment twice a day for 3 months, the OA group receives real acupuncture treatment and the SA group receives placebo acupuncture treatment (non-penetrating, sham skin-needle therapy, sham cupping). All patients will receive acupuncture treatment twice per week for 3 months. The primary outcome is bone mineral density (BMD) and the secondary outcomes include estradiol (E2), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), bone gla protein (BGP), bone alkaline phosphatase (BALP), total antioxidant capacity (TAC), advanced oxidation protein products (AOPP), PPARγ, β-catenin, FoxO3a levels, visual analog pain scale score (VAS), Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndrome scores and quality of daily life score (QOL). Outcome measures will be collected at baseline, middle of the treatment (1.5 months), the end of treatment (3 months). The present protocol followed the SPIRIT guidelines and fulfills the SPIRIT Checklist.Conclusion: This study will be conducted to compare the efficacy of OA versus SA. This trial should help to evaluate whether OA can effectively prevent and treat PMOP by improving the estrogen levels of postmenopausal women. The mechanism is to improve the imbalance of osteogenic differentiation and lipogenesis of bone-marrow cells under oxidative stress.Trial Registration: Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, ID: ChiCTR1800017581. Registered on 5 August 2018. URL: http://www.chictr.org.cn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in the expressway traffic state are in essence the temporal and spatial variations of traffic flow parameters. According to the real traffic flow data of a three-lane road section of an expressway in Beijing, there is a difference in characteristic between the traffic flow in the cross section and the traffic flow in lanes. By comparing the occupancy-volume data with traditional two-phase traffic flow pattern map and three-phase traffic flow pattern map, we can see that the traditional traffic phase theory is hard to describe the state of urban expressways and the occupancy-volume data are universally discrete. We regard the occupancy-volume standard deviation as a non-stationary time series and process it with BG algorithm, and then we obtain the change point of data discretization and based on this, classify the traffic flow of expressways into unblocked flow, congested flow and jam flow. The measured occupancy-volume data indicates that the classification of traffic state based on the change point coincides with the actual operation status of the vehicle and that it is well adaptable under all road conditions with well-equipped traffic flow detection equipment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: We report our experience of the safety of partial recanalization of the portal vein using a novel endovascular radiofrequency (RF) catheter for portal vein tumor thrombosis. Methods: Six patients with liver cancer and tumor thrombus in the portal vein underwent percutaneous intravascular radiofrequency ablation (RFA) using an endovascular bipolar RF device. A 0.035-inch guidewire was introduced into a tributary of the portal vein and through which a 5G guide catheter was introduced into the main portal vein. After manipulation of the guide catheter over the thrombus under digital subtraction angiography, the endovascular RF device was inserted and activated around the thrombus. Results: There were no observed technique specific complications, such as hemorrhage, vessel perforation, or infection. Post-RFA portography showed partial recanalization of portal vein. Conclusions: RFA of portal vein tumor thrombus in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma is technically feasible and warrants further investigation to assess efficacy compared with current recanalization techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) combined with more than one power source offer additional flexibility to improve the fuel economy and to reduce pollutant emissions. The dynamic-programming-based supervisory controller (DPSC) presented here investigates the fuel economy improvement and emissions reduction potential and demonstrates the trade-off between fuel economy and the emission of nitrogen oxides (NOx) for a state-of-charge sustaining parallel HEV. A weighted cost function consisting of fuel economy and emissions is proposed in this paper. Any possible engine-motor power pairs meeting with the power requirement is considered to minimize the weighted cost function over the given driving cycles through this dynamic program algorithm. The fuel-economy-only case, the NOx-only case, and the fuel-NOx case have been achieved by adjusting specific weighting factors, which demonstrates the flexibility and advantages of the DPSC. Compared with operating the engine in the NOx-only case, there is 17.4 per cent potential improvement in the fuel-economy-only case. The fuel-NOx case yields a 15.2 per cent reduction in NOx emission only at the cost of 5.5 per cent increase in fuel consumption compared with the fuel-economy-only case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Molecular weights of genome RNA segments of rice dwarf virus (RDV) and rice ragged stunt virus (RRSV) were estimated by electron microscopy. The segments separated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis were examined using a cytochrome C method. Estimated molecular weights of the RDV segments 1 to 12 were 2.92, 2.27, 2.18, 1.69, 1.60, 1.07, 0.97, 0.93, 0.82, 0.85, 0.59 and 0.55 × 10, respectively. These values were in good agreement with those estimated by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis under denaturing condition (Uyeda and Shikata, 1984). However, in the case of the segments 8 to 12, the values were higher than those determined by electrophoresis under non-denaturing condition using reovirus (type 2 or 3) or cytoplasmic polyhedrosis virus of as a size marker. Genome size of RRSV was also reestimated and the segments 6 to 10 were found to be larger than those previously determined. Reliability of sizing of dsRNA by electron microscopy is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]