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Objective: To explore the metabolic differences between dry eye patients with Qi-Yin deficiency and heat stagnation in liver meridian patterns, and clarify their metabolic characteristics. Methods: Patients with dry eye who were treated in the Ophthalmology Ward and Outpatient Department of the First Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine from October 1, 2020, to October 30, 2021 were enrolled as the research participants in the study. They were assigned to two groups based on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) syndrome types: heat stagnation in liver meridian pattern group and Qi-Yin deficiency pattern group. Healthy volunteers who underwent health check-ups in the Health Management Department were included as healthy group following the random number table method. The tears of the patients and the healthy volunteer participants were tested by high-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS). The differential metabolites were screened out by multivariate statistical analysis, and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment was performed on the differential metabolites. Finally, the association analysis of differential proteins and metabolites was conducted to verify and supplement the metabolites. Results: A total of 32 dry eye patients were enrolled, including 16 cases with heat stagnation in liver meridian pattern and 16 cases with Qi-Yin deficiency pattern. Fourteen healthy volunteers were included as healthy group. There were no significant differences in baseline characteristics among the three groups (P > 0.05). A total of 412 biomarkers were determined in Qi-Yin deficiency pattern group, mainly including lipids, lipid-like molecules, organic acids and their derivatives, organic heterocyclic compounds, and nucleosides and their analogues. For heat stagnation in liver meridian pattern group, 112 metabolites were determined, mainly including organic acids and their derivatives, lipids, and lipid-like molecules. The KEGG enrichment results of pathways and the relative content analysis of differential markers demonstrate that purine metabolism and caffeine metabolism pathways are common metabolic characteristics of all dry eyes. Among them, deoxyinosine monophosphate (dIMP) and 2-(formamido)-N1-(5-phospha-D-ribosyl) acetamidine can serve as their biomarkers. The main characteristics of Qi-Yin deficiency syndrome pattern were the significant enhancement of metabolic pathways such as lysine degradation, ovarian steroidogenesis, cholesterol metabolism, pyrimidine metabolism, and bile secretion (P < 0.05). Dry eye associated with the heat stagnation in liver meridian pattern is mainly characterized by inhibition of the valine, leucine, and isoleucine biosynthesis pathways (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Metabolomics can be used as an effective basis for TCM syndrome classification. Different patterns of dry eye syndrome exhibit typical characteristics in the types and concentrations of metabolites, which correspond to the syndrome classification in TCM. This study initially confirms the rationality of TCM syndrome classification and provides significant reference for the mechanism of dry eye and drug development.

Objective: To predict the active components and action targets of Wuyao (Linderae Radix) in the treatment of chronic pelvic inflammatory disease (CPID) based on network pharmacology, explore possible mechanisms of the treatment through animal experiments, and provide a scientific basis for clinical applications of Wuyao (Linderae Radix). Methods: Possible active components and targets of Wuyao (Linderae Radix) in the treatment of CPID were obtained applying network pharmacology and molecular docking technology. CPID rat models were established using the mixed Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Ureaplasma urealyticum plus the performance of mechanical injury. Hematoxylin-eosin (HE) staining was applied to observe the pathological changes in the uterus, fallopian tube, and spleens of rat models. The contents of nitric oxide (NO), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and malondialdehyde (MDA) in the serum of rats were determined with the use of corresponding detection kits. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test was used to measure the expression of interleukin (IL)-6 and IL-10 in the serum of rat models. Flow cytometry was used to determine the percentage of CD4+ and CD8a+ T cells as well as CD4+ CD25+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) in the spleen of rat models. Results: A total of nine potential active components and four core therapeutic targets related to inflammatory response in Wuyao (Linderae Radix) were obtained. The animal experiments showed that Wuyao (Linderae Radix) markedly inhibited uterus swelling, regulated morphological changes in the fallopian tube and spleen, effectively reduced inflammatory infiltration and injuries in the uterus and fallopian tube, and improved spleen functions in CPID rats. Moreover, Wuyao (Linderae Radix) markedly reduced the levels of NO, IL-6, and MDA, and increased the levels of IL-10 and SOD in the serum of rats. Wuyao (Linderae Radix) also elevated the percentage of CD4+ T cells and the CD4+ T/CD8a+ T cell ratio, reduced the percentage of CD8a+ T cells, and raised the percentage of CD4+ CD25+ Tregs that had been abnormally decreased in rat models (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Wuyao (Linderae Radix) could have therapeutic effects on CPID rats by relieving oxidative stress, mitigating inflammatory levels, and regulating the immuno-function of T cell subgroups to improve the pathological changes in CPID rats. It is a medicinal herb worth being further explored for its clinical values.

The article discusses the demic diffusion of Han culture into the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau based on ancient genomes. It highlights the migration of Han populations from the Yellow River basin into southwest China over the past two millennia. The study of ancient individuals from the Songshan site in Guizhou province reveals a genetic makeup with major Yellow River-related ancestry shared in the Han population, supporting the demic-diffusion model of Han culture expansion. Additionally, the research explores the genetic contribution of Songshan populations to modern Tai-Kadai and Hmong-Mien speaking populations in Guizhou, shedding light on the genetic makeup of historical Guizhou populations. [Extracted from the article]

The multi-level modeling technology of Building Information Modeling (BIM), combined with Three-dimensional Geographic Information System (3DGIS) macro-scene visualization technology and location information, can realize the transmission of decentralized information from various disciplines to multi-disciplinary collaborative information sharing services. It can be applied independently for the whole life cycle, which plays a positive role in reducing the cost and improving the efficiency of engineering planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance. In this paper, the data integration and function integration methods of 3DGIS and BIM are designed. In order to avoid the breaking problems caused by attribute information loss and excessive simplification in the process of BIM data integration, the attribute mapping between 3DGIS and BIM based on Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) and City Geography Markup Language (CityGML) and the data simplification method considering the geometric characteristics of BIM are designed. By setting the relevant preconditions and thresholds of patch merging, on the premise of maintaining the structural characteristics of BIM data surface, reduce the amount of model data to improve the efficiency of BIM data loading, rendering and display effect in 3D geospatial scene. Through the data and function integration of 3DGIS and BIM, we can effectively manage the data of large-scale model, and calculate and obtain the geospatial location and direction of key parts of buildings through the coordinate transformation of BIM, which can effectively assist the rapid and accurate positioning of BIM in virtual 3D scene and expand the visualization ability of 3DGIS. By effectively integrating 3DGIS and BIM, this paper gives full play to the spatial management advantages of 3DGIS and the component management advantages of BIM. The rationality and operability of the method are verified by its application in the operation and maintenance management project of concealed facilities in actual buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Crocin exhibits anti-depressant properties. However, its underlying mechanisms and its relationship with metabolomics remain unclear. This study elucidates the mechanism of action and potential targets of crocin in treating chronic unexpected mild stress (CUMS)-induced depression in rats. Male Sprague-Dawley (SD) rats underwent 4 weeks of CUMS to establish the depression model. The normal control (distilled water), crocin (25 mg/kg), and fluoxetine (5.4 mg/kg) groups were orally administered for 4-weeks. Behavioural tests evaluated the effects of crocin, while liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry metabolomics identified differential metabolites and their associated metabolic pathways. Subsequently, network pharmacology was utilized to predict the targets of crocin. Crocin significantly increased body weight (from 319.16 ± 4.84 g to 325.67 ± 2.84 g), sucrose preference (from 0.46 ± 0.09 to 0.70 ± 0.09), vertical activity (from 2.83 ± 1.94 to 8 ± 2.36), horizontal activity (from 1 ± 0.63 to 4.5 ± 3.08) and decreased immobilization time (from 13.16 ± 2.69 to 3.97 ± 3.00). Metabolomics analysis identified 7 metabolites and 5 associated metabolic pathways. From the combined analysis of network pharmacology and metabolomics, three targets (PRMT1, CYP3A4, and GLB1) are the overlapping targets and the two most important metabolic pathways are tryptophan metabolism and glycerolipid metabolism. This study provides insights into the antidepressant therapeutic effect of crocin and its underlying mechanisms. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the metabolic mechanism involved in the anti-depressant effect of crocin, establishing a strong foundation for future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prolonged exposure of the peritoneum to high glucose dialysate leads to the development of peritoneal fibrosis (PF), and apoptosis of peritoneal mesothelial cells (PMCs) is a major cause of PF. The aim of this study is to investigate whether Astragaloside IV could protect PMCs from apoptosis and alleviate PF. PMCs and rats PF models were induced by high glucose peritoneal fluid. We examined the pathology of rat peritoneal tissue by HE staining, the thickness of rat peritoneal tissue by Masson's staining, the number of mitochondria and oxidative stress levels in peritoneal tissue by JC‐1 and DHE fluorescence staining, and mitochondria‐related proteins and apoptosis‐related proteins such as PGC‐1α, NRF1, TFAM, Caspase3, Bcl2 smad2 were measured. We used hoechst staining and flow cytometry to assess the apoptotic rate of PMCs in the PF model, and further validated the observed changes in the expressions of PGC‐1α, NRF1, TFAM, Caspase3, Bcl2 smad2 in PMCs. We further incubated PMCs with MG‐132 (proteasome inhibitor) and Cyclohexylamine (protein synthesis inhibitor). The results demonstrated that Astragaloside IV increased the expression of PGC‐1α by reducing the ubiquitination of PGC‐1α. It was further found that the protective effects of Astragaloside IV on PMCs were blocked when PGC‐1α was inhibited. In conclusion, Astragaloside IV effectively alleviated PF both in vitro and in vivo, possibly by promoting PGC‐1α to enhance mitochondrial synthesis to reduce apoptotic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dam safety is an important basic part of national water network security. Building a dam deformation prediction model based on monitoring data is crucial to ensure dam safety. However, traditional statistical regression methods have shortcomings, such as a weak nonlinear fitting ability when constructing dam deformation monitoring and prediction models. The residual part of the statistical regression results usually contains parts that cannot be effectively explained by the linear regression method, that is usually highly variable and noisy. In this study, the phase space reconstruction method is used to smooth the residual term of the statistical regression model to eliminate noise interference. On this basis, an improved long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network is used to learn the nonlinearity contained in the residual term of the linear regression. Considering the impact of parameter selection on model performance, the gray wolf optimization (GWO) algorithm is used to determine the optimal parameters of the model for better performance. A high arch dam is used as a case study, with multiple measuring points used as research objects. The experimental results show that the phase space reconstruction can effectively smooth the high-frequency components in the residual term and remove noise interference. In addition, the GWO algorithm can effectively determine the hyperparameters of the LSTM network, thereby constructing a residual prediction model with high prediction accuracy. The combination of statistical models and deep learning prediction methods can effectively improve the model prediction performance while preserving the model interpretability and transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grasping the change behavior of dam foundation seepage pressure is of great significance for ensuring the safety of concrete dams. Because of the environmental complexity of the dam location, the prototypical seepage pressure data are easy to be contaminated by noise, which brings challenges to accurate prediction. Traditional denoising methods will lose the detailed characteristics of the objects, resulting in prediction models with limited flexibility and prediction accuracy. To address these problems, the prototypical data with noise are denoised using the variational mode decomposition (VMD)-wavelet packet denoising method. Then, an improved temporal convolutional network (ITCN) model is built for dam foundation seepage pressure data prediction. A hysteresis experiment is carried out to optimize the model structure by correlating the receptive field size of the ITCN model with the hysteresis of the dam foundation seepage pressure. Finally, the optimal ITCN dam foundation seepage pressure prediction model of each measurement point is obtained after the training. Three state-of-the-art methods in dam seepage monitoring are used as benchmark methods to compare the prediction performance of the proposed method. Four evaluation indicators are introduced to quantitatively evaluate and compare the prediction performance of the proposed method. The experimental results prove that the proposed method achieves high prediction accuracy flexibility. The indicator values of the ITCN model are only 50%–90% of those of LSTM and RNN models and 15%–40% of those of the stepwise regression model, and the values are all small. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a novel 3D roaming algorithm considering collision detection and interaction is proposed that adopts a triangle mesh to organize and manage massive spatial data and uses a customized bounding box intersector to rapidly obtain the potential collided triangles. The proposed algorithm can satisfy the requirements of timeliness and practicability during complicated large 3D scene collision detection. Moreover, we designed a method to calculate the collision point coordinates according to the spatial position relation and distance change between the virtual collision detection sphere and triangles, with the triangle edges and three vertices being considered. Compared to the methods that use the native intersector of OpenSceneGraph (OSG) to obtain the collision point coordinates, the calculation efficiency of the proposed method is greatly improved. Usually, when there is a big split/pit in the scene, the viewpoints will fly off the scene due to the fall of the collision detection sphere, or the region interior cannot be accessed when the entrance of some local region (e.g., internal grotto) of the scene is too small. These problems are solved in this paper through 3D scene-path training and by self-adaptively adjusting the radius of the virtual collision detection sphere. The proposed 3D roaming and collision detection method applicable for massive spatial data overcomes the limitation that the existing roaming and collision detection methods are only applicable to 3D scenes with a small amount of data and simple models. It provides technical supports for freewill browsing and roaming of indoor/outdoor and overground/underground of the 3D scene in cases of massive spatial data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the basic characteristics and proposes a concept for the complex system of geographical conditions (CSGC). By analyzing the DPSIR model and its correlation with the index system, we selected indexes for geographical conditions according to the resources, ecology, environment, economy and society parameters to build a system. This system consists of four hierarchies: index, classification, element and target levels. We evaluated the elements or indexes of the complex system using the TOPSIS method and a general model coordinating multiple complex systems. On this basis, the coordination analysis experiment of geographical conditions is applied to cities in the Henan province in China. The following conclusions were reached: ①According to the pressure, state and impact of geographical conditions, relatively consistent measures are taken around the city, but with conflicting results. ②The coordination degree of geographical conditions is small among regions showing large differences in classification index value. The degree of coordination of such regions is prone to extreme values; however, the smaller the difference the larger the coordination degree. ③The coordinated development of geographical conditions in the Henan province is at the stage of the point axis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Objective] To further detect the active components and functions of Solanum cathayanum, since previous research showed that it had relatively good antioxidant activity. [Methods] After extraction, isolation and structural identification, the antioxidant protection activity of scopolin from Solanum cathayanum to the damaged SH-SY5Y cells was researched, which was induced by H2O2. [Results] Far from the toxicity range, scopolin showed similar antioxidant activity like positive control VE; and the LDH leakage rate reduced significantly, showing that scopolin reduced the membrane damage. Besides, 0.1 [xmol/mL scopolin was helpful to enhance the contents of SOD and GSH. [Conclusions] Scopolin could be developed and used for the research on drugs for neurodegenerative diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 36-year-old gravida-2-para-1 mother underwent amniocentesis at 20 weeks of gestation only because of advanced maternal age. She gave birth to a normal healthy baby boy 2 years ago. Her husband was 40 years old. There was no family history of birth defects or genetic diseases. aCGH analysis on the uncultured amniocytes revealed a 5.5 Mb chromosomal deletion in the region of 9q21.13q21.32 (78,645,382–84,115,555) (Figure 1). Conventional karyotyping showed normal karyotype.