Search

Background: VitD3 may contribute to a successful pregnancy through modulation of immune responses. Therefore, VitD3 deficiency may have a role in the immunopathogenesis of unexplained recurrent spontaneous abortion (URSA). However, the mechanisms of immunomodulatory actions of VitD3 in decreasing the risk of recurrent spontaneous abortion have not been understood well. Objective: The purpose of this research was to investigate the influence of 1,25VitD3 on regulatory T cells /Th17 axis, the gene expressions and concentrations of related cytokines including, TGF-β, IL-10, IL-6, IL-23, and IL-17A in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of healthy women as a control group and women with URSA. Method: Isolation of PBMCs was performed from peripheral blood of the subjects of the studied groups (20 women with URSA as a case group, and 20 control women). The effects of 1,25VitD3 (50 nM, for 24 hours) on the studied parameters were evaluated and were compared to the positive and negative controls in vitro. Flow cytometry analysis was used to determine the percentages of regulatory T cells and Th17 cells. For gene expression measurement and cytokines assay, Realtime PCR and ELISA were carried out. Results: The proportion of regulatory T cells was markedly lower, while the proportion of Th17 cells in women with URSA was considerably higher than in the control group (P=0.01, P=0.01). The ratio of the frequency of Tregs to the baseline (1,25VitD3/Untreated) increased, while the ratio of the frequency of Th17 cells to the baseline decreased in women with URSA relative to the controls (P= 0.01, P=0.04). 1,25VitD3 increased IL-10 expressions at both the protein and mRNA levels in PBMCs in women with URSA relative to the control group (P=0.0001, P=0.04). TGF-β levels in the cultured supernatants decreased significantly in the case group in the presence of 1,25Vit- D3 relative to the controls (P=0.03). 1,25VitD3 treatment also significantly decreased gene expressions of IL-6, IL-17A, and IL-23 in PBMCs of women with URSA (P=0.01, P=0.001, P=0.0005), as well as the levels of those cytokines in cell culture supernatants (P=0.03, P=0.02, P=0.01, respectively) in women with URSA relative to the controls. Conclusion: According to the findings of this research, modulation of immune responses by 1,25VitD3 is accomplished by strengthening Tregs function and inhibiting inflammatory responses of Th17 cells, which may have a positive impact on pregnancy outcome. Thus, as an immunomodulating agent, VitD3 may be effective in reducing the risk of URSA.

Combined with the spatial data processing capability of geographic information systems (GIS), a three-dimensional (3D) landslide wave height calculation method is proposed based on grid column units. First, the data related to the landslide are rasterized to form grid columns, and a force analysis model of 3D landslides is established. Combining the vertical strip method with Newton's laws of motion, dynamic equilibrium equations are established to solve for the wave height. Moreover, a 3D landslide wave height calculation expansion module is developed in the GIS environment, and the results are compared with those of the two-dimensional Pan Jiazheng method. Comparisons show that the maximum wave height obtained by the proposed method is 24.6% larger than that based on the Pan Jiazheng method. Compared with the traditional two-dimensional method, the 3D method proposed in this paper better represents the actual spatial state of the landslide and is more suitable for risk assessment.

Cryptographic algorithms are fundamental to security. However, it has been shown that secret information could be effectively extracted through monitoring and analyzing the cache side-channel information (i.e., hit and miss) of cryptographic implementations. To mitigate such attacks, a large number of detection-based defenses have been proposed. To the best of our knowledge, almost all of them are achieved by collecting and analyzing hardware performance counter (HPC) data. But these low-level HPC data usually lacks semantic information and is easy to be interfered, which makes it difficult to determine the attack type by analyzing the HPC information only.Actually, the behavior of a cache attack is localized. In certain attack-related steps, the data accesses of cache memory blocks are intensive, while such behavior can be distributed sparsely among different attack steps. Based on this observation, in this paper, we pro- pose the locality-based cache side-channel attack detection method, which combines the low-level HPC running data with the high-level control flow graph (CFG) of the program to achieve locality-guided attack pattern extraction. Then we can use GNN graph clas- sification technology to learn such attack pattern and detect malicious attack programs. The experiments with a corpus of 1200 benchmarks show that our approach can achieve 99.44% accuracy and 99.47% F1-Score with a low performance overhead.

The actual driving conditions of electric vehicles (EVs) are complex and changeable. Limited by road adhesion conditions, it is necessary to give priority to ensuring safety, taking into account the energy recovery ratio of the vehicle during braking to obtain better braking quality. In this work, an electric vehicle with an EHB (electro-hydraulic braking) system whose braking force adaptive distribution control strategy is studied. Firstly, the vehicle dynamics model, including seven degrees of freedom, tire, drive motor, main reducer, battery pack, and braking system, was constructed, which is attributed to the vehicle configuration and braking system scheme. Second, based on curve I and ECE regulations, the adaptive braking force distribution control strategy was formulated by taking the maximum regenerative braking torque as the inflection point, the synchronous adhesion coefficient as the desired point, and the battery SOC, road adhesion coefficient, and braking strength as the threshold. Finally, the vehicle dynamics simulation model was built on the Matlab/Simulink platform, and the simulation results verified the feasibility of the proposed braking force adaptive allocation control strategy. The research shows that the adaptive distribution control strategy can better adapt to the complex and variable driving conditions of the vehicle by combining the inflection point and the desired point. The braking energy recovery ratios of the vehicle under the NEDC and NYCC cycle conditions on a high adhesion road are 52.62% and 47.45%. The braking force distribution curve is close to curve I under the low adhesion extreme road.

Introduction. Acute pain is a prevalent problem for dementia residents in nursing homes. A variety of intervention strategies have been applied to address this problem. However, there remains an issue of inadequate pain control. This study aims to explore the analgesic efficacy of auricular acupressure (AA) for dementia residents with acute pain in nursing homes. Methods. A multicenter, single-blind, randomized, and sham-controlled clinical trial was performed in three nursing homes in Yinchuan, China. All of the 206 eligible patients with acute pain were randomly divided into two groups for real AA therapy or sham AA (at sham point stimulation) therapy. The primary outcome was measured with a face pain scale revised (FPS-R) score before the procedure, 5 min after the start of the intervention, and 5 min after finishing the procedure. Secondary outcomes covered three physiological parameters, adverse reactions observed, satisfaction level of caregivers, acceptance of patients, and additional use of analgesics. Results. There was a significant difference in pain scores based on FPS-R between the two groups ( p < 0.01 ). Pain score in the true AA group was 1.84 ± 0.23, compared with 2.22 ± 0.81 in the sham AA group. No adverse events were found during the whole procedure for all patients. The satisfaction level of caregivers and acceptance of patients in the real AA group were significantly higher than those in the sham AA group. Conclusion. This study shows that real AA was an alternative analgesic modality in reducing acute pain in patients with mild dementia.