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Abstract Magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRSI) can distinguish between benign and malignant prostate diseases. This study investigated the potential of MRSI for diagnosing prostate cancer and guiding prostate biopsy. We retrospectively reviewed 234 patients with suspected prostate cancer who underwent MRSI with targeted prostate biopsy. Patients were divided into two groups according to their puncture pathology: prostate cancer (n = 103, 44.02%) and benign prostatic disease (n = 131, 55.98%). The t-test, Mann–Whitney U test, or chi-square test was used to compare the groups. The diagnostic abilities of MRSI, prostate-specific antigen level, digital rectal examination, and magnetic resonance imaging without contrast for prostate cancer were compared using the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC-ROC); the ARC-ROC values were 0.831, 0.768, 0.692, and 0.656, respectively. The AUC-ROC value for diagnosing prostate cancer using the CC/c ratio was 0.853. CC/c ratio > 0.97 was identified as the optimal threshold for diagnosing prostate cancer (sensitivity, 86.5%; specificity, 78.6%; Youden index, 0.651). Spearman correlation analysis revealed a correlation between the CC/c ratio and Gleason score (r = 0.737, p

Abstract Background Wilson disease (WD) is an autosomal recessive inherited disease caused by ATP7B variants and characterized by copper metabolism defects. However, children with WD are often asymptomatic, making the clinical diagnosis difficult. Therefore, more accurate methods are required for clinical diagnosis. The objective of this study was to highlight the phenotypic and genetic characteristics of children with WD in northeast China. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical data and gene sequencing results of 65 children with WD from January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2022, at the Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University. All data refer to the time of diagnosis before treatment. Results The median age at diagnosis was 5 years (range 1.2–15 years). In 50 cases (50/65, 76.9%) patients, routine physical examinations revealed only abnormal liver function. However, they had a significantly negative (p

Panax ginseng, a traditional Chinese medicine with a history spanning thousands of years, faces overexploitation and challenges related to extended growth periods. Tissue-cultured adventitious roots and stem cells are alternatives to wild and field-cultivated ginseng. In this study, we assessed the in vitro xanthine oxidase and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities of saponin extracts among cultured cambial meristematic cells (CMC), adventitious ginseng roots (AGR), and field-cultivated ginseng roots (CGR). The xanthine oxidase (XO) and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities were determined by uric acid estimation and the p-NPG method, respectively. Spectrophotometry and the Folin–Ciocalteu, aluminum nitrate, and Bradford methods were employed to ascertain the total saponins and phenolic, flavonoid, and protein contents. The calculated IC50 values for total saponin extracts against XO and α-glucosidase were 0.665, 0.844, and >1.6 mg/mL and 0.332, 0.745, and 0.042 mg/mL for AGR, CMC, CGR, respectively. Comparing the total saponin, crude protein, and total phenolic contents revealed that AGR > CMC > CGR. To the best of our knowledge, this study presents the first report on the in vitro comparison of xanthine oxidase and α-glucosidase inhibitory activities among AGR, CMC, and CGR. The findings offer valuable insights into the development of hypoglycemic and antihyperuricemic medicinal, nutraceutical, and functional products utilizing AGR and CMC.

Background: Temporal patterns of stimulation represent a novel dimension for improving the efficacy of spinal cord stimulation to treat chronic neuropathic pain. Objective: We hypothesized that nonregular temporal patterns of stimulation designed using a computational model would be superior to conventional stimulation at constant frequencies or completely random patterns of stimulation. Methods: Using a computational model of the dorsal horn network and an optimization algorithm based on biological evolution, we designed an optimized pattern of spinal cord stimulation with comparable efficacy and increased efficiency relative to constant frequency (CF) stimulation. We evaluated the effect of different temporal patterns on individual neurons recorded in the dorsal horn of urethane-anesthetized rats. Results: The optimized pattern and 50 Hz CF stimulation produced greater inhibition of spontaneously firing neurons recorded in vivo than random 50 Hz stimulation or a pattern designed intentionally with poor fitness. Spinal Cord Stimulation (SCS) led to significant changes in the firing patterns of recorded units, and stimulation patterns that generated significant inhibition also tended to reduce entropy and regularize the firing patterns of units, suggesting that patterns of dorsal horn neuron activity may be important for pain perception in addition to the firing rate. Conclusions: These results demonstrate that the computational model can be used as a tool for optimizing stimulation parameters and suggest that optimized temporal patterns may increase the efficacy of spinal cord stimulation.

Objectives: Although the traditional attribute-based encryption scheme achieves one-to-many access control,there are still challenges such as single point of failure,low efficiency,no support for data sharing,and privacy leakage.To solve these problems,a ciphertext policy hidden access control scheme based on blockchain and supporting data sharing is proposed. Methods:Firstly,an efficient attribute vector and policy vector generation algorithm is proposed using vector compression technology, which judges whether user attributes satisfy the access policy through the inner product operation result of attribute vector and policy vector.Afterwards, the prime order bilinear group and attribute encryption technology were used to achieve fine-grained access control while avoiding the leakage of user attribute values; using the interstellar file system to store the ciphertext and storing the hash address of the ciphertext on the blockchain through a smart contract,it realizes distributed and reliable access control and reduces the storage overhead of the blockchain. The revocation function is realized by maintaining the revocation list in the revocation contract,which avoids the abuse of the user's private key.Finally, data sharing is realized by combining the proxy re-encryption technology. Results: Security analysis and simulation result analysis is carried out for the scheme. Firstly, based on the asymmetric decisional bilinear Diffie-Hellman,the ciphertext indistinguishability of the scheme in the access control phase and the data sharing phase is proved. Secondly, the proposed scheme is compared with some access control schemes with similar technologies in recent years in terms of group order,access structure,policy hiding and so on,it can be seen from the comparison results that the scheme in this paper has certain advantages in terms of functional characteristics.Afterwards,the cost of deploying contracts and executing related functions on the blockchain is evaluated.The results show that the gas cost of the scheme in this paper is within a reasonable range.The final simulation results show that the proposed scheme has high efficiency in both the access control stage and the data sharing stage.According to the design of the existing paper comparative experiments,we set the number of attributes to 0-20.In the access control stage, the initialization time, key generation time, encryption time and decryption time are compared with other schemes.The results show that although the computational overhead of the proposed scheme is relatively large in the initialization stage, the efficiency in the key generation stage, encryption stage and decryption stage is higher than that of the other three schemes, so the proposed scheme has higher efficiency in the access control stage.In the data sharing stage, the re-encryption time and re-decryption time are compared with other schemes, respectively. The results show that the proposed scheme has high efficiency in both the re-encryption stage and the re-decryption stage.The scheme in this paper has a constant number of pairings in the decryption stage and the re-decryption stage,so the decryption time and the re-decryption time are small and the changes are not obvious with the increase of the number of attributes. Conclusions: The ciphertext policy hiding access control scheme based on blockchain and supporting data sharing constructed in this paper solves the problems of single point of failure, low efficiency, non-support for data sharing and privacy leakage in traditional attribute-based encryption schemes.Firstly,the attribute vector and policy vector generation algorithm proposed in this paper not only supports AND-gates on+/-,but also supports AND-gates on multi-valued attributes by extension. Secondly, the distributed management of ciphertext is realized by using Ethereum and Interstellar file system.Afterwards,the use of prime order bilinear groups improves the pairing efficiency of bilinear pairs and realizes data sharing by combining proxy re-encryption technology.

Mounting evidence from animal models of inflammatory and neuropathic pain suggests that inflammation regulates the resolution of pain by producing specialized pro-resolving mediators (SPMs), such as resolvin D1 (RvD1). However, it remains unclear how SPMs are induced in the central nervous system and whether these mechanisms can be reconciled with outcomes of neuromodulation therapies for pain, such as spinal cord stimulation. Here, we show that in a male rat model of neuropathic pain produced by spared nerve injury (SNI), 1 kHz spinal cord stimulation (1 kHz SCS) alone was sufficient to reduce mechanical allodynia and increase RvD1 in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). SNI resulted in robust and persistent mechanical allodynia and cold allodynia. Spinal cord electrode implantation was conducted at the T11-T13 vertebral level 1 week after SNI. The spinal locations of the implanted electrodes were validated by X-Ray radiography. 1 kHz SCS was applied for 6 h at 0.1 ms pulse-width, and this stimulation alone was sufficient to effectively reduce nerve injury-induced mechanical allodynia during stimulation without affecting SNI-induced cold allodynia. SCS alone significantly reduced interleukin-1β levels in both serum and CSF samples. Strikingly, SCS significantly increased RvD1 levels in the CSF but not serum. Finally, intrathecal injection of RvD1 (100 and 500 ng, i.t.) 4 weeks after nerve injury reduced SNI-induced mechanical allodynia in a dose-dependent manner. Our findings suggest that 1 kHz SCS may alleviate neuropathic pain via reduction of IL-1β and via production and/or release of RvD1 to control SNI-induced neuroinflammation.

This paper proposes a method of controlling the vortex-induced vibration (VIV) of wind turbine towers by adding continuous trapezoidal straight spoiler plates (TS) onto their outer surface: a fluid–solid coupling model was constructed to simulate the processes of Karman vortex generation and shedding on the different surfaces of an original tower (O–tower) and a tower with TS (TS–tower) with assumed and actual Re, while the VIV frequencies were also calculated and compared; the effects of the TS geometry parameters on the VIV frequency of towers were studied to investigate the recommended size; a modal analysis was carried out to research the effects of TS on the vortex-induced resonance risk of towers; and the simulation results as well as relevant research conclusions were validated by an analogical wind tunnel test.

This article studies the effects of some basic parameters of a parallel-axis helix gear stage on wind turbine gearbox vibration in a case study: a multibody dynamic model is constructed to simulate the drive train of a faulted multistage wind turbine gearbox with serious vibrations. The significant vibration behaviour of the drive train for typical excitations is calculated, and the results according to specified geometric parameters of the gears are analysed in detail to investigate effective solutions for vibration reduction. The results indicate that the helix angle and numbers of teeth of a gear pair are the most significant factors for solving the problem. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions and relevant mechanisms are discussed and validated by a prototype vibration test.

Hybrid mobile robots with two motion modes of a wheeled vehicle and truss structure with the ability to climb poles have significant flexibility. The motion planning of this kind of robot on a pole has been widely studied, but few studies have focused on the transition of the robot from the ground to the pole. In this study, a locomotion strategy of wheeled-legged pole-climbing robots (the WL_PCR) is proposed to solve the problem of ground-to-pole transition. By analyzing the force of static and dynamic process in the ground-to-pole transition, the condition of torque provided by the gripper and moving joint is proposed. The mathematical expression of Centre of Mass (CoM) of the wheeled-legged pole-climbing robots is utilized, and the conditions for the robot to smoothly transition from the ground to the vertical pole are proposed. Finally, the feasibility of this method is proved by the simulation and experimentation of a locomotion strategy on wheeled-legged pole-climbing robots.

The spinal dorsal horn (DH) processes sensory information and plays a key role in transmitting nociception to supraspinal centers. Loss of DH inhibition during neuropathic pain unmasks a pathway from nonnociceptive Ab-afferent inputs to superficial dorsal horn (SDH) nociceptive-specific (NS) projection neurons, and this change may contribute to hyperalgesia and allodynia. We developed and validated a computational model of SDH neuronal circuitry that links nonnociceptive Ab-afferent inputs in lamina II/III to a NS projection neuron in lamina I via a network of excitatory interneurons. The excitatory pathway and the NS projection neuron were in turn gated by inhibitory interneurons with connections based on prior patchclamp recordings. Changing synaptic weights in the computational model to replicate neuropathic pain states unmasked a low-threshold excitatory pathway to NS neurons similar to experimental recordings. Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is an effective therapy for neuropathic pain, and accumulating experimental evidence indicates that NS neurons in the SDH also respond to SCS. Accounting for these responses may inform therapeutic improvements, and we quantified responses to SCS in the SDH network model and examined the role of different modes of inhibitory control in modulating NS neuron responses to SCS. We combined the SDH network model with a previously published model of the deep dorsal horn (DDH) and identified optimal stimulation frequencies across different neuropathic pain conditions. Finally, we found that SCS-generated inhibition did not completely suppress model NS activity during simulated pinch inputs, providing an explanation of why SCS does not eliminate acute pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is used clinically to limit chronic pain, but fundamental questions remain on the identity of axonal populations recruited. We developed an ex vivo adult mouse spinal cord preparation to assess recruitment following delivery of clinically analogous stimuli determined by downscaling a finite element model of clinical SCS. Analogous electric field distributions were generated with 300-μm × 300-μm electrodes positioned 200 μm above the dorsal column (DC) with stimulation between 50 and 200 μA. We compared axonal recruitment using electrodes of comparable size and stimulus amplitudes when contacting the caudal thoracic DC and at 200 or 600 μm above. Antidromic responses recorded distally from the DC, the adjacent Lissauer tract (LT), and in dorsal roots (DRs) were found to be amplitude and site dependent. Responses in the DC included a unique component not seen in DRs, having the lowest SCS recruitment amplitude and fastest conduction velocity. At 200 μm above, mean cathodic SCS recruitment threshold for axons in DRs and LT were 2.6 and 4.4 times higher, respectively, than DC threshold. SCS recruited primary afferents in all (up to 8) caudal segments sampled. Whereas A and C fibers could be recruited at nearby segments, only A fiber recruitment and synaptically mediated dorsal root reflexes were observed in more distant (lumbar) segments. In sum, clinically analogous SCS led to multisegmental recruitment of several somatosensory-encoding axonal populations. Most striking is the possibility that the lowest threshold recruitment of a nonprimary afferent population in the DC are postsynaptic dorsal column tract cells (PSDCs) projecting to gracile nuclei. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the electrochemical modification of lean coal samples with potential gradients of 1 V/cm, 2 V/cm and 4 V/cm, gas adsorption desorption test of coal samples before and after modification, and the change of pore structure and surface group of coal samples before and after modification were analyzed by low temperature liquid nitrogen adsorption test and infrared spectrum test. The results show that: the saturated adsorption capacity of unmodified lean coal sample is 30.030 mL/g, the Langmuir pressure of unmodified lean coal sample is 0.876 MPa, the final desorption rate of unmodified lean coal sample is 83.204%. After electrochemical modification with potential gradients of 1 V/cm, 2 V/cm and 4 V/cm, the saturated adsorption capacity of coal sample is 29.239 mL/g, 28.329 mL/g and 26.667 mL/g,and the Langmuir pressure of coal sample is 0.932 MPa, 1.042 MPa and 1.048 MPa respectively,the final desorption rate of coal sample is 84.235%, 85.541% and 87.840% respectively; the larger the potential gradient, the smaller the specific surface area of the modified coal sample, the larger the average pore diameter, and the more the number of oxygen-containing functional groups, the better the effect of inhibiting gas adsorption and enhancing gas desorption.

The application effect of electrochemical method to enhance gas drainage in coal seam mainly depends on the rationality of engineering design and parameter selection. In this paper, the method of laboratory experiment is used to electrochemically modify the lean coal with H2SO4, Na2SO4 and NaOH. The gas adsorption and desorption characteristics of the coal samples before and after modification are tested. The changes of pore structure and surface group of the lean coal samples after modification are analyzed by the low temperature liquid nitrogen adsorption test and infrared spectrum test. The results show that the saturated adsorption capacity of the unmodified coal sample is 30.03 mL/g, the Langmuir pressure of the unmodified coal sample is 0.88 MPa, and the final desorption rate of unmodified coal sample is 83.20%; after the electrochemical modification of H2SO4, Na2SO4 and NaOH, the saturated adsorption capacity of the coal sample is 23.70 mL/g, 26.67 mL/g, 32.79 mL/g, respectively; the Langmuir pressure of the coal sample is 1.15 MPa, 1.05 MPa, 0.80 MPa, respectively, and the final desorption rate of coal sample is 90.10%, 87.84% and 81.71%, respectively; the lean coal after electrochemical modification of H2SO4 electrolyte has the smallest specific surface area, the largest average pore diameter and the largest number of oxygen functional groups, so the effect of inhibiting gas adsorption and strengthening gas desorption is the best.