Search

Aims: This study aims to investigate the pharmacological effects and the underlying mechanism of cannabidiol (CBD) on methamphetamine (METH)‐induced relapse and behavioral sensitization in male mice. Methods: The conditioned place preference (CPP) test with a biased paradigm and open‐field test were used to assess the effects of CBD on METH‐induced relapse and behavioral sensitization in male mice. RNA sequencing and bioinformatics analysis was employed to identify differential expressed (DE) circRNAs, miRNAs, and mRNAs in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) of mice, and the interaction among them was predicted using competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) network analysis. Results: Chronic administration of CBD (40 mg/kg) during the METH withdrawal phase alleviated METH (2 mg/kg)‐induced CPP reinstatement and behavioral sensitization in mice, as well as mood and cognitive impairments following behavioral sensitization. Furthermore, 42 DEcircRNAs, 11 DEmiRNAs, and 40 DEmRNAs were identified in the NAc of mice. The circMeis2‐miR‐183‐5p‐Kcnj5 network in the NAc of mice is involved in the effects of CBD on METH‐induced CPP reinstatement and behavioral sensitization. Conclusions: This study constructed the ceRNAs network for the first time, revealing the potential mechanism of CBD in treating METH‐induced CPP reinstatement and behavioral sensitization, thus advancing the application of CBD in METH use disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pellet quality is one of the key technologies restricting the smelting of high proportion pellets in the blast furnace, especially the reduction swelling index of low silicon fluxed pellets. In this paper, the inhibition effect of grinding blast furnace return ore on the reduction swelling index of low silicon fluxed pellets was studied and application has been conducted in Shougang Jingtang Company. The experimental results show that the addition of 5–15% fine grinding blast furnace ore into pellet production significantly reduced the reduction swelling index of pellets from 23.5% to 14.3%. Microstructure and energy spectrum analysis shows that calcium ferrite, magnesium ferrite and liquid phase in the pellets with fine grinding blast furnace return ore increased obviously with a more uniform distributed liquid phase between hematite particles than in the basic group pellets and tended to be "homogenized". It is conducive to inhibiting the generation of ferric whiskers in the reduction process of the hematite phase, and thus contributes to the reduction of the swelling index. Since its implementation at Shougang Jingtang in 2020, this technology has yielded positive results. The fluxed pellets exhibit good quality with an alkalinity of 1.1, a SiO2 content of 2.1%, and a reduction in the swelling index from 18.1% to 16.5%. Besides, the pellet ratio into blast furnace has reached 55%, the cumulative average utilization coefficient of three 5500 m3 super-large blast furnaces is 2.43t/(m3. d), and the monthly average for a single furnace reaches 2.62t/(m3. d). Meanwhile, consumption reduction of calcium-containing flux slaked lime in fluxed pellets by 0.9% is greatly beneficial to reducing the cost of pellets and expanding the resources of pellet powder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fractal pore structure exists widely in natural reservoir and dominates its transport property. For that, more and more effort is devoted to investigate the control mechanism on mass transfer in such a complex and multi-scale system. Apparently, effective characterization of the fractal structure is of fundamental importance. Although the newly emerged concept of complexity assembly clarified the complexity types and their assembly mechanism in a fractal system, equivalent extraction of the complexity types is the key for effective characterization. For these, we proposed a deep learning-based method to extract the original and behavioral complexity assembled in bed-packing fractal porous media for simplification and without loss of generality. In detail, the UNeXt network model was trained to obtain the independent connected regions of scaling objects with different scales, the edge detection and clustering analysis algorithms were employed to extract the number-size relationship between two successive scaling objects, and the unique inversion of fractal behavior was realized by taking the number-size model and fractal topography together. Consequently, an equivalent characterization method for fractal complex pore structure was developed based on the concept of complexity assembly. Our investigation provides a theoretical guidance and method reference for the quantitative characterization of fractal porous media that will guarantee the fundamental requirement for the accurate evaluation of the transport properties of natural reservoir. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) has dramatically reduced mortality in people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), but it does not completely eradicate the virus from the brain. Patients with long-term HIV-1 infection often show neurocognitive impairment, which severely affects the quality of life of those infected. Methamphetamine (METH) users are at a significantly higher risk of contracting HIV-1 through behaviors such as engaging in high-risk sex or sharing needles, which can lead to transmission of the virus. In addition, HIV-1-infected individuals who abuse METH exhibit higher viral loads and more severe cognitive dysfunction, suggesting that METH exacerbates the neurotoxicity associated with HIV-1. Therefore, this review focuses on various mechanisms underlying METH and HIV-1 infection co-induced neurotoxicity and existing interventions targeting the sigma 1 receptor, dopamine transporter protein, and other relevant targets are explored. The findings of this review are envisaged to systematically establish a theoretical framework for METH abuse and HIV-1 infection co-induced neurotoxicity, and to suggest novel clinical treatment targets., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Miao, Wang, Li, Huang, Wang, Teng, Xu, Yang, Tian, Yang, Li and Zeng.)